Strange Little Girl
by xX-Misty
Summary: Waking in a hot warehouse full of ravers in 1995 after suffering a knife wound to the stomach, Kim had a long battle to find her feet at Fenchurch East before she began to love her new life with Gene, Alex and the rest of CID. This is her story.
1. Chapter 1

_**A/N: This is a kind of a side project that I wanted to write alongside my other A2A fics. In my third fic, 'Strangers When We Meet', the character of Kim first appeared but she'd already been in Gene's world for a few months by that point, already been through a trauma discovering what happened to a missing sibling and gone through all kinds of trouble getting lured by Keats by the time Simon and Robin arrived and the story began. I had always had Kim's backstory in my mind and always intended to write it at some point. Well, I've decided to write it now. **_

_**In a change to the rest of my stories I've decided to write this one in the first person as Kim telling the story through her own eyes. It will start with her arrival in the Geneverse, telling about her first few months, working with Gene and Alex, and then give a retelling of Strangers and Whispering from Kim's point of view. I've never written in first person before so I'm a bit nervous about this!**_

_**Expect it to be updated more sporadically and in shorter bursts than my other stories. I hope you enjoy it!**_

**~xXx~**

**Prologue**

I'm writing this in the hope that you might understand why I've done what I've done. It's so hard to explain but it was a choice that I had to make. There's so much of my life that you don't know, that I've had to keep hidden. But there comes a time when worlds collide and the secrets are destined to come out. I want to tell you this in my own words because there will be so many lies and mistruths coming out. Please listen to my story and try to put yourself in my place.

I had never really wanted to do anything else. As far back as I could remember I wanted to join the force. To make a difference. Watching the police and detectives in action during a family crisis in my late teens sealed the deal for me. As soon as I was old enough I applied and got in. Spent my two years on the beat, couldn't believe it when I made it to CID. I felt like my life was complete. They say _work to live, not live to work_… it was the other way round for me. I loved what I was doing and my promotion to DS was a total dream come true.

I didn't have much room for anything in my life but my job. My girlfriend Sandra and I were never romance of the year material. I'd never really been in a relationship before her. Fun and sex were fine, I just couldn't get bogged down with the relationship stuff. Sandra and I never gave each other enough time. I loved her, but that's not the same as being _in_ love. I was kind of in love with my job though.

I remember the night it happened like it was yesterday. Two men robbing a young woman late at night – it made my blood boil. They'd been targeting the vulnerable – young women on their own, old biddies, science fiction fans, that kind of thing, waiting around cashpoints and following them home. But this one night they'd picked on the wrong woman and she fought back. Got her throat slashed for the trouble. It became a hell of a lot more serious from then on.

There was a helicopter. They'd caught the suspects in its search light at one point but they got away again. That's when I saw them, heading towards the park. I just gave chase, didn't even think about myself. All I could think about were the people whose lives they'd destroyed by taking away their safety and security.

I grabbed my radio and yelled, "Suspects heading into park, main road entrance,"

I heard my DI come on the radio.

_"DS Stringer, this is DI Matthews, requesting you cease pursuit of suspects and wait for uniform back up. Member of the public reports seeing one man in possession of a knife. Repeat, you are to cease pursuit immediately."_

I was already in the park by now. Too late to do anything else. But when I looked around there was no sign of the bastards so I got back on the radio and said,

"Lost visual trace of suspects, they've disappeared somewhere inside the park."

It all happened so quickly after that. I can't really place some of it. That's where my memory starts to wane. I remember the hands that grabbed me from behind, right around my neck. It's funny, but I remember at that point feeling strangely calm. I didn't panic. It wasn't until the other man appeared and flicked the blade of his knife out in front of me that I felt the fear. I could hear my own voice shrieking but I don't remember actually screaming. I remember begging, pleading with them to stop. It wasn't like they were ever going to listen. There was only ever going to be one course of action.

I remember the pain as the knife sank into my stomach. It was almost as though it was so bad that the pain went to another layer of my consciousness, almost like I wasn't really feeling it. I was somewhere else. I knew the pain was there but it wasn't really registering. I knew what was happening though as I dropped to the ground. I could actually feel my life fading away. _This is it,_ I thought. _Game over. _

I remember closing my eyes and feeling depressed that the last thing I was ever going to see was the bloody caretaker's shed. I lay there, my senses slowly fading out, and then things just seemed to disappear.

They say your life flashes before your eyes before you die. Well I'm glad mine didn't. It would have been this bloody long string of overtime and work. Maybe the occasional snog or one night stand thrown in. I don't remember anything after fading out until I was aware of the music playing. God, it was loud. I mean, I've done my fair share of nightclubs but this was something else. And it was hot…_ so_ hot. The atmosphere was thick and fuggy. I tried to open my eyes but they felt so heavy and it took me _so_ long to focus.

The blur of movement as people danced like idiots all around me was insane. I tried to sit up but I felt a little woozy and I couldn't get my bearings. As I slowly pulled myself upright I found myself in a warehouse. The strobe lighting made my eyes hurt and the volume of _Higher State of Consciousness_ was just about killing my ears off too, but what really got me were the bloody acid house smiley faces all over the place. Where the hell _was_ I? It had to be some kind of theme party. Tacky 90s Party or something. Oh god, the _fluorescence_ – It was so bad it was almost funny, but the situation definitely wasn't.

I'd been so shocked by what I saw that I only just remembered that I'd been stabbed. I gasped and clutched my stomach, waiting for the pain to filter through, feeling for blood but there wasn't any. I looked down. I don't know what surprised me more, the fact that my wound had disappeared or the fact that I was wearing a fluorescent yellow jacket.

I started to spin around, just trying to work out where I was, looking all around me, desperate for answers or at least an exit when suddenly the doors flew open and the music died. Figures started to filter through, some in uniforms and others in plain clothes. As they marched inside and began to round up the dancing masses my eyes were drawn to was one man standing in the doorway, his long coat casting a silhouette over the whole place like some sort of strange and ragged enigma. I shielded my eyes as the lights came up and struggled to hear what the cops were saying but my ears were ringing so much that I couldn't make most of it out. It wasn't until the enigma stepped out of the doorway and into the warehouse that I finally heard a word.

He paced through the building, looked at the crowd and took out a flask of something highly alcoholic. After taking a very long swig he screwed on the cap and turned to the crowd.

"_Hope you've all got clean pants on, boys and girls. Gene Hunt will not be impressed by the presence of skiddies."_ He looked up and down the wall of faces. _"We need yer names, yer date of birth and yer best excuse for listening to this ear-splitting pile of shit."_

I thought a knife in the guts was the end of everything.

As it turned out, it was just the beginning.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 1**

I'd stared down the barrel of a gun, I'd seen a man threaten to plunge over the side of a bridge and I'd chased joyriders with a death wish but as I stood in the line of ravers I'd never been so scared in my life. Was this a dream? It had to be. I must have passed out from loss of blood… I was hallucinating, I was sure of it. I reached down again and tried to feel for the wound. I thought that even if it wasn't still there in my dream that the pain might be able to filter through from real life. So that I'd at least know I was still alive. But there was no pain, no wound, no blood. Just a fluorescent pink bum bag.

I watched the coppers moving along the line. They were coming closer and I tried to get their attention.

"Please help me," I begged, "they had a knife, and they're still out there!"

But they didn't seem to listen, or they couldn't hear over all the shouting and complaining that was going on.

Suddenly Jarvis Cocker started searching my pockets. At least, I _thought_ it was Jarvis Cocker. He'd have won a lookalike contest any day. The purple velvet trousers were one of the most disturbing things I'd ever seen in my life. All of sudden the fact I'd been stabbed and the fact that I seemed to have appeared at some kind of illegal rave were both forgotten and all I could think about was the hideousness of the trousers that confronted me.

His hand reached into my pocket and I started to panic. I didn't know what he was going to find in there – none of the clothes were mine so how I did I know the pockets weren't full of Es? But instead of uncovering some kind of illegal stash he pulled out a small, flat object and as I watched him unfold it his expression changed completely. I wished that I'd had the privilege of seeing what it was first. Maybe it would have answered a few questions.

"Guv?" Jarvis Cocker beckoned over the man I'd seen in the doorway. What was his name? Hunt or something. I watched in silence as Jarvis Cocker handed him whatever it was he'd found in my pocket. A look like thunder came over his face and he turned his eyes to the sky.

"Bollocks" he began with more feeling than I've ever heard a soul put into a word before, "I've just arrested me new detective constable."

I stared. I didn't know what else to do, I just… stared on. The words had no meaning. My brain was trying to sort what was happening into some kind of sense but the more it tried the more scrambled it became. The first words that came into my head were,

"Detective _Sergeant_. Detective Sergeant Stringer." But the Guv didn't seem impressed.

"When there's a promotion to be 'ad I'll be the one shifting yer to the bigger desk," he said, "in the meantime lets go with what's on yer card. Now put it to good use and see if you can collect up a bag of sweeties from this bunch of traffic wardens."

"Traffic wardens?" Of all the elements of the situation to get to me the one that seemed at the top of my list of priorities was working out what he meant by that.

"They've already got the bloody Day-Glo sorted, they just need a bloody lollypop," he said and marched off down the line.

Jarvis Cocker handed me back my warrant card.

"Sorry about that," he said, "my name's Malcolm."

He held out his hand to shake mine. I stared at it. This was a dream, a bloody weird dream but a dream none the less and I knew if I reached out to shake his hand then mine would go straight through it.

"I would say it's a pleasure to meet you," I began, "but I can think of places I'd rather be right now."

I knew I sounded rude and I knew I sounded cold. But it was _my_ dream and I didn't really want to be surrounded by some kind of Pulp convention. His hand was still reaching out towards me and I knew that if I didn't respond he'd still be standing there by the time hell froze over so with a sigh I humoured him and reached out to shake it.

Warmth. Flesh. Solidity.

I had never had a dream so tangible before.

All at once I realised my senses were overwhelmed; the feeling of the hand pressed against mine, the pinching of the shoes that were a little too tight, the itching as my hair tickled my neck. The smell of the sweaty bodies and the musty boxes stacked at the back of the warehouse. The sound of a thousand ravers swearing and cursing, the noise of the whistles as some refused to get out of the raving mood and the ringing in her ears from the din of the music. And the sight of the vibrant colours, the life-perfect detail on everything around me.

I could see the stitching on my sleeve. Every individual stitch. Had a dream ever been so lifelike? So perfect and so real?

I let go of Malcolm's hand and stared at my own. My palm. I could see every single line on it. Suddenly my lifeline looked so short.

I think that was about the moment when my legs seemed to go from under me and the cold, hard ground became my resting place for the next half an hour.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 2**

I could feel myself being rocked and bumped up and down. My eyes were still closed but all my other senses were on high alert. I knew I was in the back of a car, I could feel the motion of the vehicle and hear the sound of the other cars whizzing by. I could smell something too. Pungent aftershave. I slowly opened one eye, too scared to let both loose on whatever was around me and I could see the heads of two people sitting in the front of the car. One was a man… oh God, it was that Hunt man again. _Great_. The other was a woman. I didn't see her in the warehouse. She sounded a little posh. A bit… upper-class. Couldn't really see her there with the seat in the way but I could hear every word she said.

"…_Wondered when we were going to get another one, it's been weeks since he went."_

"_Just wish they wouldn't bloody keep appearing in the middle of me undercover operations,"_ the male voice said gruffly.

"_She can't help where she arrives,"_ said the woman. That made my ears prick up. I knew they were talking about me and I damn well wanted to know what they meant, _"what's happened to her anyway, Gene?"_

"_We'll find 'er file when we get back,"_ he said, _"gonna 'ave a right problem with this one. Claims she's a DS."_

"_Oh Gene, its hard getting demoted."_

"_How would you know? You were never demoted!"_

"_I remember Sam Tyler…"_

"_Oh Sam bloody Tyler, woman, he's not the spokesperson for people who have had the pleasure of working alongside the Gene Genie you know!"_

They both fell silent for a few moments and I almost went back to sleep. Or passed out again, I'm not sure which. I wasn't feeling well. There were strange voices in my head. I thought I could hear sirens and someone talking about not wanting to risk pulling the knife out in case they caused more damage. My head was floating and everything felt a little strange but eventually I heard them talking in the front of the car again. They pulled me out of my half-sleep and made the world I had found myself in seem far more real than whatever I was hearing from out there.

"_I'm gonna need a new bloody car, you now. Handling on the Merc's gone to crap."_

"_You say that every time you watch Top Gear,"_ the woman sighed.

I closed my eyes again. This time sleep really was heading my way. I remember the last thought to cross my mind before it all went black as I heard them muttering and bickering was, _I bet they're shagging. _

~xXx~

I heard a lot of voices around me as I stirred. The glare of the lights above me almost made my head split in two. They almost made me long for the strobe lighting. As my eyes started to focus I found Jarvis – I mean, Malcolm, setting a cup of something hot and steaming on a desk in front of me.

"Here," he said, "plenty of sugar in this. Guv's orders."

"Where am I?" It sounded like a bloody cliché. I was a bit like Alice in Wonderland, suddenly finding myself in a strange and surreal place except I didn't remember falling down any rabbit holes. Not unless there was one I didn't notice in the park.

"Fenchurch East," said Malcolm, "The guv and Missus Guv drove you back." He paused. "But don't tell her I called her that."

I sat up a little straighter and my eyes scanned the room. There were ravers in every corner and day-glo idiots being questioned by coppers and detectives. I knew this room... well, I partly knew the room. I knew it was part of CID but it looked so different. Parts of it looked like they'd been totally remodelled. Even 60 Minute Make Over couldn't work _that_ bloody fast.

A shadow fell over me and my eyes rose to find that Hunt guy standing above me. His hand reached down, clutching a flask and he added a little something to my tea.

"That'll bring yer round," he said.

"How did I get here?" I looked up, trying to focus.

"Drove you."

"No, I mean," I sighed, "the last thing I knew, I was in a park. There were two men and one of them had a knife –"

"Hours dancing in a hot warehouse," he said, "yer dehydrated and hallucinating. Get that down you. Once we've sent the day-glo cattle through the gates we'll be heading for a nightcap and a few rounds o'Karaoke. Get yer head together by then and I might even let you buy a round."

I stared as he walked away. He didn't care, did he? A new sergeant – sorry, _constable_ – had turned up at his station with invisible stab wounds and he didn't care.

I stood up and walked slowly around the office, trying to work out what the hell was going on. There was a woman applying bandages to various ravers who didn't seem very happy about that, Malcolm was busy complaining that the warehouse had steamed up his glasses and somewhere in the middle of them stood a woman with a rather dated haircut. I hadn't seen that cut since the whole _Rachel_ thing exploded when Friends was at its most popular. I walked towards her, shaking from head to toe. She seemed like the only one who had her head screwed on, so I begged of her,

"Can you help me? I don't know where I am and I have to get home."

She turned to look at me and there was a strange kind of sadness in her eyes. Something distant. Almost as though she could identify. She gave me a sincere smile and held out her hand to shake mine.

"I'm DCI Alex Drake," she said, "and, you _are_ home."

Those were the words that disturbed me greatly. They made me shudder deep inside. This wasn't my home – my home didn't look like something from a decade ago. My home wasn't full of strangers. My home was full of internet crime, not illegal raves in the middle of nowhere.

The date on the newspaper that lay on a desk nearby had to be a mistake. It absolutely had to be a mistake.

_19__th__ April 1995._

I swallowed as my heart started to speed up even more. I realised I'd been asking the wrong question. It shouldn't have been '_where am I'_ at all.

It should have been, '_when_ am I?'


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 3**

My mind was racing as I sat drinking my slightly alcoholic tea. My eyes kept going to the newspaper lying on the desk and I just couldn't stop shaking my head. I knew I'd been stabbed and all I could figure was that the pain had been so bad that my head had created some kind of dream for me to escape into until someone gave me some pain relief or until I died. I was terrified, not knowing how to break free of my own mind and get back to the real world, and the idiots around me weren't helping.

I nodded numbly as Hunt asked me if I was coming to the bar. The idea of going to a place where alcohol was served was a very appealing one, so I sat silently in the back of his car once again until we reached the place. The garish neon sign outside flashed '_BASK'_ at me time and again. I just wanted to go home and find out if I was going to live or die but I found myself dragged along by a sea of CID bodies who gravitated towards the club and soon took over the stage.

I sat there nursing my pint. It wasn't exactly ladylike but I didn't care. It wasn't like I was in the real world. I needed beer, large _quantities_ of beer, and buying pints halved the number of times I'd have to go any buy another one.

As the alcohol slowly took over my mind and my body I became less bothered by the raucous rendition of _Cotton Eye Joe_ that Malcolm appeared to be giving, crooning it to a brunette standing just in front of the stage. She'd been the one covering people with bandages earlier. It was hate at first sight really.

"I do not like her," I muttered into the foam as I buried my face in another beer.

The more I drank, the less I knew what was happening and that suited me fine. I thought if I drank myself into oblivion then I'd pass out completely and wake up in a hospital bed back home where all the papers agreed it was 2003. I'd left 1995 behind long ago and it wasn't a year I cared to visit again.

The music seemed to fade away as my eyelids grew heavy and my head flopped to the table, and then peaceful sleep took me over. Oh, that moment of bliss. I'll never forget it. The sleep was deep and dreamless, although one or two things seemed to filter through. Someone was reaching into my pockets – I wondered if they were trying to steal my money but I was too far gone to care. Someone mumbled something about a house and the gruff northern accent of the Guv said something about taking me home.

_Home._ I wished.

~xXx~

It was the first of many hangovers that I experienced in 1995.

I think in a way the first one was the worst because it came instead of awakening in 2003. My head was sore and pounded like a drum as I slowly opened one eye. I had no idea where I was but I certainly wasn't home. The garish bed sheets and the slightly stained curtains weren't exactly pleasing to the eye. I tried to sit up but my head spun and I had to lie back down for a few minutes. Where the fuck was I now?

The room was small. For a room that was supposed to be a bedroom it wasn't big enough to be a flower bed. When I finally found myself able to sit up without the room threatening to spin too quickly I tried to work out how I'd arrived there. Maybe the stabbing had been the dream? Maybe I'd gone out and gotten so pissed that I _dreamed _I'd been stabbed and ended up sleeping at someone's place? But I didn't recognise the place and there was no one around.

I felt a pressing need to relieve my bladder as it filled with the beer I'd consumed the night before and blearily made my way onto the small landing. There was only one other room on the floor, a pokey bathroom that looked like the last person to wash in it had spent the previous day mud wrestling. Gagging a little at the state of the place, I peed as fast as my body would let me, washed my hands and dried my hands on my clothes. No way was I using the towel. Not unless I wanted to be hospitalised with seventy different diseases.

I clung to the banister as I slowly made my way downstairs. What a ghastly place – two up, two down, the rooms each the size of a matchbox. My stomach was churning from the vast quantities of alcohol and the lack of food so I made my way a little reluctantly to the kitchen to see if there was anything to eat. While there was some cereal the milk had been left so out of date it resembled something you might squeeze out of a boil. I retched and ran for the sink, fearing the worst, but just about managed to settle my guts. What the fuck _was_ this place? I seemed to be further from home with every moment that passed.

I walked slowly back up the stairs. My head was still spinning, but this time with confusion rather than the hangover. I knew I needed to get out of that crappy little place. Heading to the wardrobe I looked for anything vaguely resembling the twenty first century but sadly I didn't find what I was looking for. Pulling on a pair of jeans and throwing an acceptable jacket over my garish top I left the building and walked and walked, just trying to find some familiarity, but I couldn't find any. Shops were different, buildings hadn't been built yet, nothing was where I expected it to be. The more I walked, the more I wanted to cry, and crying is something I don't _do_.

Eventually I went to the only place that I knew, even if it did look like Changing Rooms had been having a field day over it.

With a slightly smug look on his face, the Guv folded his arms and turned to me.

"Wondered if we'd see you today, Detective Constable Stringer. Wasn't sure if you floated away on a barrel o'beer." He threw some papers at me which I barely caught. "Get reading. We're tracking Miller. DI Kite will brief you. If she ever gets her arse out of the first aid kit."

My heart sank. It truly sank. Last night had not been a dream and my life wasn't my own any more. So who the bloody hell's was it?

~xXx~

I couldn't have cared less about Miller or how many guns he'd bought into London. I couldn't have cared less about Kite, the DI with a bandage fixation. I especially couldn't have cared less about the two-year-old-esque strop that Hunt threw when they ran out of teabags. I just wanted to go home.

"_Gene, why don't you try expanding your horizons?"_ I heard DCI Drake say to him, "_you've been drinking tea out of that same chipped mug every day for years. Try getting something in town. There's a new coffee place around the corner. Go and get yourself a coffee or something."_

"_Gene Hunt does not go to poncey coffee shops,"_ he told her firmly.

"So that's the file," Kite concluded. That was actually the only sentence I heard of the whole conversation. "Get yourself caught up on it today."

"Fine," I said crossly, taking it from her and sitting at a crusty old desk. What the hell was I doing? I felt like a twat. I was stuck in my own head and I was doing _work?_ Not even _real_ work – work from way back in the nineties! This was shit – I remembered bloody Miller from just after I joined up. I wasn't going to read a bunch of stupid paperwork for an eight year old case. The bloke was languishing in jail.

As the rest of the crowd left on various courses of action I found myself alone in the office. Surely it couldn't get any more depressing than that. I wasn't going to stick around in a dream of my own creation doing work all by myself. No way.

I left the building and walked through the streets, passing all manner of shops. They all seemed so dated – so did all the people I saw. This was just bollocks. Total and utter bollocks.

I passed a hairdressers' and caught a glimpse of myself in the window. What the hell had happened to my _hair_? It was still long and dark but it had been layered to death. I shuddered, it was ultra-girly and not at all like me.

As I peered through the window I caught sight of a smiling woman paying for her cut. She had a short blonde crop and looked so free and striking. My heart gave a little flutter, she was bloody attractive and certainly the first woman to catch my eye since I arrived. I looked back at my reflection and hesitated for a moment. I'd seen myself with long, dark hair all my life and yet on other people I didn't find it attractive. It wasn't what I liked. I liked the short, blonde look. Especially with dark roots – they were all part of the fun.

I'd never had the guts to do it myself though. Loved it on other women but didn't think I had the looks to carry it off myself. And what would I do if I lopped off all my hair and looked like a bloody schoolboy instead of a punky young woman? That was my fear and my lack of self-confidence always got in the way of looking the way I wished that I could.

"This isn't the real world," I told myself. I reached up to my hair and stroked it down a little with my fingers. This was some kind of dream. What's the point of knowing you're in a dream if you don't get to fulfil a wish or two?

Checking I had money in my pocket, I walked through the doors. I usually avoided hairdressers at all costs – they'd never listen to what I said and I'd always end up leaving looking like a bloody idiot. But this wasn't real, I had no fear.

"Cut, dye and blow dry, please," I said to the gorgeous woman behind the desk, her short purple elfin cut doing very strange things to my heart.

X

Three hours later I left the shop, my hair bleached to within an inch of its life, two and a half feet of the stuff lopped off and what was left sticking up at all angles.

I loved it.

I looked at the confused young detective reflected in the window and for once I loved her, too.

Maybe there were some things about this strange world to enjoy after all.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 4**

I couldn't believe the difference that haircut made. I wish I'd done it years ago. At long last I was free from the dark tresses hanging around me. I'd used them as a kind of a mask, hiding behind them because I didn't like the face that stared back at me from the mirror. Now I found myself in a world where I was free to do whatever I pleased there was nothing to stop me from changing my appearance in the way that I wanted because if I didn't like what I saw then one day I'd wake up back in the real world with no harm done.

That was the problem though. I wanted to be back in that real world, not in a world where I was lucky if I found a computer that ran Windows '95 instead of Windows 3.1. I wanted to be back in a world where I could call my family and talk to them on the phone, not listen to see if I could pick up a whisper on the wind. I wanted to live in a world where I woke up next to my girlfriend, not next to the grottiest pair of curtains I'd seen in my life.

A week passed, or maybe two. I got into a routine of going to work with a team of people I knew despised me, slinking off as soon as I was able and trying to block out the situation I was in. I was still scared but trying to cope with it a day at a time.

_This is a long dream,_ I told myself again and again, _one day when I wake up it will be in a hospital bed._

But after two weeks I was still waking up in a grotty house with grotty curtains in a grotty world with stupid, grotty people.

It was a fortnight after I arrived when I turned up half an hour late, my head still pounding from the beers I'd put away the night before. I lives the days just to get to the nights, where I could drown myself in alcohol. Sometimes I'd tag along to _Bask_ and mock the idiots who thought they could sing even vaguely in tune. Sometimes I'd go by myself to a bar or a club. I had no fear, it wasn't like home where I found it harder to talk to people. Here it didn't matter whether I made a fool of myself or not so I was happy to walk up to strangers and start a conversation. A couple of those conversations led to finding the occasional tongue down my throat, although that was as far as it went. And I knew that Sandra was waiting for me at home but this was just in my own head – it's not like dreaming about kissing someone makes you _actually_ unfaithful, right?

This one day my hangover was just throbbing. Hunt was in the foulest of moods. The bloody kettle was broken because Bammo had been trying to cook soup in it and this pissed the Guv off to a degree that I thought he might as well boil the water for his tea in his hot head.

"_Me blood has passed minimum tea saturation level,"_ he yelled, _"I am doing nothing until someone finds me a working kettle!"_

"_Oh Gene, for God's sake,"_ it was DCI Drake. She marched into the office and planted a cardboard cup on his desk, _"here."_

"_What's this?"_

"_It's a latte,"_ she said.

Hunt looked at it highly suspiciously.

"_Because what we do in this country when the going gets tough is turn to a nice milky drink?"_ he cried.

"_Just try it,"_ Drake rolled her eyes, "_you never know, you might like it."_

He stared at the cup.

"_How many sugars?"_ he asked.

"_Just to start you off, there's eight in that one."_

He raised an eyebrow.

"_Never let it be said the Gene Genie isn't open to change,"_ her said before he took the cup into his office and slammed the door.

The sound of the door slamming went right through my head. That was enough. I couldn't take any more of the place for one day. I grabbed my bag, got to my feet and left by the nearest exit.

It was a fairly warm spring day and there was a lot of flesh on display. I felt a little overdressed in my garish nineties get-up but at least I didn't have the ton of hair weighing me down any more. A couple of young ladies passed by in their summer clothes. You could see they were shivering – it wasn't _that_ warm – but they didn't seem to care. I looked enviously at the jewel one of them wore in her belly button. I'd always wanted mine pierced but I'd never had the guts. I'd always wanted other things pierced too but worried about stupid things, like my parents disapproving even though I was a grown woman.

But here there was no one to disapprove. Except Hunt, and I didn't like him anyway. So I made the decision to make the most of the situation and use it as an opportunity to do some of the other things I'd always wanted to but never had the guts to.

"Hey," I cried as I ran to the girls. They looked a little shocked. "Sorry for asking but where did you get your belly button done? Is there a piercing place nearby?"

"Yeah, it's round by the arches," she said.

"Thanks," I smiled broadly as I thought about it.

I was nervous, of course. Actually, I was bloody shitting myself. My ears hurt enough when I had _them_ pierced. I arrived in the studio and must have looked a wreck as I shook and trembled and picked out the jewellery I wanted it pierced with. A moment later I was lying on the table, staring at the globe on the ceiling they'd hung there for mugs like me to stare at when they were about to get a needle through their guts.

"OK, deep breath," the dark haired girl with the big needle told me and I did as I was told before the searing pain radiated through my abdomen.

I gasped and clung to the table. How the fuck did anyone get _anything_ pierced if it was this painful? It was only then that I realised the globe had disappeared and the ground was moving. Looking around, I was in an ambulance. I could see the knife still stuck in my guts and saw the paramedics fussing around me.

"_Not sure this one's going to make it_," I heard one say,_ "she'd losing a lot of blood."_

"_Sats are dropping," _I heard another say, and then in the next heartbeat I was back, staring at the globe, my heart racing and my palms sweating.

"Hey," the piercer tried to get my attention, "hey, bloindie." I finally turned to look at her. "You're all done." She waited for me to react but I was too shocked by what I'd been through. "You can let go of my table now. Go and look in the mirror."

As I slowly rose from the table and peered at my abdomen there was no knife in my guts, just a little gold ring with a blue jewel attached to it. I breathed heavily, trying to get my bearings and finally settled my nerves enough to get to my feet. Breathing heavily I walked to the mirror and studied myself. That was a little part of me that I'd always been missing. That's what I thought as I saw the reflection. That little jewel was always supposed to be there but for some reason I'd never made that move to get it. Now it was like I was filling in the missing pieces of myself a little at a time.

"Perfect," I said quietly with a slightly lopsided smile.

~xXx~

I was still shaking a little as I left the shop. I'm sure they all thought I was just a cowardly customer but who the hell goes through something like _that_ when they're getting their belly button pierced? The words of the paramedic rang through my head.

_Not sure this one's going to make it._

"Yes I fucking am," I said out loud, picking up speed as I walked.

I cut through a tunnel and found myself at a row of shops, The smell of leather came from one, cluttered with jackets of all styles and sizes, while beside it the scent of coffee filled the air. _That's_ what I needed – a nice strong coffee.

I went in quickly and bought some strong coffee concoction with chocolate in it. No idea what it was called, it was all a bit complicated for me. I decided that a hatred of poncey coffee shops were maybe the one thing I had in common with Hunt.

As I took my coffee outside and tried to navigate my way back to the station I saw a blue car parked just down the road. I don't even know why it caught my eye. It was like there was a tiny spark of a memory there, just waiting to come forth.

There were two figures standing beside it, a man and a woman, both in their early twenties. I couldn't see their faces all that well but from their body language something really wasn't right. I caught snippets of their conversation on the breeze.

"…_can't carry on this way. You're slowly dying before my eyes."_

"_But there's nothing I can do about it!"_ the woman cried, _"I don't have any choice."_

"_Yes you do, I'm giving you a choice!"_ the man stepped towards her and laid a hand on her shoulder._ "If you come with me we can start a new life where no one knows who we are."_

_"Do you realise what you're asking me to do?"_

"_I'm trying to save you from self-destructing!"_

She put her hand to her head and leaned against the car.

"_I need to think about this, Mark. I need time."_

"_I'm leaving on Thursday. Whether you're with me or not is up to you."_ He paused, _"Where he comes with me or not…"_

The woman turned her face away from him.

"_I told you, I need time,"_ she said again.

As she turned her face towards me I saw her features for the first time and my legs almost went from beneath me. It was a face I hadn't seen in eight years and one I never thought I would see again. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't _understand_ it. My mind couldn't take it and I found my head spinning. As the breath left my body and I stumbled backwards I whispered the only words that came into my mind;

"_My sister."_


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 5**

I could barely speak as I made my way back to the station. The shock of seeing my sister after all those years had completely knocked me senseless. I stood and watched from afar as she finally climbed into the car with the young man and they drove off together, before I started the walk back to work. I wondered if there was any way I could get into Hunt's scotch. I needed something for my nerves.

That was the part of that world I found so hard to deal with – seeing old faces, people I knew from so long ago except the way they _used_ to be.

As I walked back my mind went over and over what happened to my family in 95, the first time around. It almost tore us to pieces. I don't know how we survived it. I was seventeen going on eighteen when she disappeared; Julia, my older sister. I suppose I'd never really gotten to know her as well as I should have done. She was three years older than I was and always kind of distant. I always felt as though there was something hiding behind her eyes that she never let us know.

She'd been to uni and dropped out. She wasn't happy there either… there was talk of bullying but she never told us what happened and, my parents being who they were, they never asked. It was always better to keep your business to yourself in my family. My parents were somewhat old fashioned. My coming out speech had not been my crowning glory, met by comments about how marrying a man was good because there would always be someone around to open especially tricky jars. We learnt to keep our private lives to ourselves – they were good people, don't get me wrong, they always put clothes on our backs and food on the table, but never really tried to understand us as people.

Which was why, I suppose, when Julia disappeared no one knew where to even start looking. She'd been going out to meet a friend one day. My mother had berated her for doing nothing with her life. I remember hearing from upstairs when Julia responded that she couldn't do what she _wanted_ with her life and left in a fit of temper. Many hours later someone turned up on the doorstep to ask for her but my mother told him that she was out and didn't know when to expect her back. When no one had seen her the next day we started trying to ask around but she'd kept her life so private we didn't know any of her friends' names.

Two days passed when we finally called the police. There were searches, appeals and many many tears but we never saw or heard from her again.

We never even knew what happened. The last reports of seeing her getting into a blue car were confirmed by CCTV but the driver was never identified and my sister was never found.

Police didn't know whether to treat it as an abduction, a potential murder or a simple missing person's case. Either way, they never found her. Or she never _wanted_ to be found.

As I arrived back at the station and made my way to CID I entered just in time to see Hunt scrunching up a cardboard cup and throwing it in the bin. I noticed three more already in there.

"_Stringer."_

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I was so close to saying something I was going to regret.

"Yes, _sir_?" I said through gritted teeth.

"I need another one of them coffee things. Late wotsits."

"Lattes," I sighed.

He nodded.

"One for me, one for Kite… Cocker, you thirsty?"

Malcolm took off his glasses and polished them.

"No, thank you," he said, "these are still steamed up from the last one."

Hunt turned back to me.

"And one for DCI Drake an' all. And no bloody detours to the beauty parlour this time, wherever yer going it's not working."

I started to shake with anger as he slammed the door of his office. Who the hell did he think he was to speak to me that way? I was a DS, I'd worked bloody hard for years and now my rank and my job satisfaction had been taken away on one fell swoop.

~xXx~

Hunt and his cronies never got their bloody lattes that day. I buggered off again, so confused by what I had seen that I started the drinking early for the night; drowned my sorrows in beer and scotch and by belting out _Parklife_ like a bloody idiot at the karaoke. I shuddered as I realised, I was becoming one of them. The CID Drones.

When I woke the next morning my mouth was full of cotton and I had the familiar thumping headache firmly in place. I couldn't face work just yet so I decided to kill the hangover with the euphoria from getting metal through my flesh. After my experience the day before I was worried they'd take one look at me, roll their eyes and tell me to bugger off, but they were quite happy to take my money and stick a bar through my eyebrow.

I loved it. I loved all of it. Every time I looked on the mirror now I was looking a little more like I felt on the inside. That's a very precious thing to have. So many people never really manage that. Back in the real world I knew I never could but here? Here in my head I was free. Free on the outside at least. I was still trapped in a place of work that was slowly killing me from the inside out.

This one day I tried to make an effort. I thought that, if I was going to be here a while, I should try to get on the good side of Hunt at least so I bought a batch of lattes and took them back with me. Just for a moment I thought that I was actually going to do something right. The look on his face as he accepted the latte and greedily chugged half of it in one go was the first time I'd seen him look pleased since I arrived. It was just a shame that he followed it up in the next breath with;

"Cheers, Metal Mickey. More sugars next time."

Metal _Mickey?_ That fucking _robot_? My blood boiled. It absolutely bubbled over with fury as I pushed the rest of the lattes to the ground and let my mouth rampantly unleash a batch of expletives.

Why wasn't I being punished for that? Why was there no sense of discipline against me? That made no sense. It was as though they knew I wasn't supposed to really be there… or Hunt did, at least. Sometimes Drake looked at me with sympathy and I got the feeling she knew more than she was letting on but then she'd just turn away and go about her duties. I felt alone and scared all over again.

Just as I saw Malcolm slip on the pool of latte and land on his arse, soaking his purple velvet trousers right through, the phone rang on my desk. I didn't recall it doing that before. Someone actually wanted to talk to me?

"Hello?" I said as I listed the receiver, "DS… _DC_ Stringer?"

There was a pause. The line sounded strange and crackly, and then finally on came a voice.

"_We need to get her into surgery right away. The location of the knife in her abdomen is fairly precarious. If it moves then her internal organs could become punctured and severely damaged. But don't worry, Mister Stringer we're doing all we can. She's in safe hands."_

I shook and trembled as I let the receiver drop to the desk. I could hardy take in what I'd heard. It seemed ridiculous, how could someone on the phone be talking t o my father? How could a message from the other side be coming through the grotty old receiver on my desk? I ran my fingers through my heair and breathed oin deeply. This was too much, just far too much and I didn't know what to do. I was going into meltdown.

~xXx~

The last thing I wanted was to spend a night with that lot. Besides, I was scared I was going to end up singing _Crocodile Shoes_ or something. So I took myself off to another bar that night.

There were one or two gay bars nearby, nothing to write home about really but I just wanted to be around people I could identify with. I hadn't exactly met many other lesbians in CID, had I? No one knew about my sexuality and that's the way I wanted to keep it. God's sake, Hunt had a fit when he caught Malcolm wearing eyeliner and he's _straight_! If he knew I was gay my life wouldn't be worth living.

I stepped into the bar feeling a little nervous. I wasn't sure why. I had shed most of my nerves when it came to going out in this place. None of these people were real so what did it matter if I threw up on someone or ended up snogging their brains out – I'd never see them again.

I moved to the bar and signalled for the bar tender. The music was loud, not far off the volume of the rave I arrived in, and I tried desperately to place my order but instead of the beer I wanted I was served something in a fetching shade of vermillion with two umbrellas popped in the top. Still, it seemed to have a lot of alcohol on it, so it was alright with me.

I drank and danced, danced and drank. I tried to catch the eye of a young brunette whose legs were driving me crazy but she went off with some redhead and I gave up on the idea of pulling. Maybe that was one area I should have left alone. I decided to concentrate on dancing instead. The music was loud but took me right back and I loved reliving a bit of my youth.

When I bumped into this one guy my first instinct was to apologise profusely, I could see he'd spilt beer down himself and – dream or not – I still felt bad.

"I'm sorry," I blabbed, "I'm really sorry –"

"Doesn't matter" he yelled over the music.

"I've spilt your beer," I pointed out unnecessarily.

"It's fine," he said, brushing down his shirt.

"Let me –" I began, reaching for the tissues in my bag. Yeah, I know. How old woman is that? But I never left home without tissues. Hayfever season – even in dream – was not kind to my nose.

"No, don't," he said loudly as I tried to wipe the wet patch on his shirt.

There was something strange about it; the shirt, I mean. Or what was under it, at least. As I tried to wipe the beer away I could feel something underneath it, that felt like a really big elastic bandage, It seemed really strange, like he'd bound a massive wound, all the way across his chest.

I think _that_ was when I realised he wasn't a he..

My eyes scanned up to his face for the first time and I saw the smooth chin, hair-free top lip. That wasn't a close shave. I looked into his eyes and an instance of recognition filtered through my body. The gelled-back hair moulded into a masculine style, the strapping and – as I noticed just after – the stuffing down below had been enough to convince me, at first. But the eyes… there was no getting away from those eyes. I knew whose eyes I was looking into.

My sister's.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 6**

It seemed untrue. It seemed perfectly unbelievable. For all the world I thought that I must be seeing things, imagining it, but the more I stared the more she knew for certain this was Julia. I'd looked at that face over breakfast for the first seventeen years of my life. There was no mistaking it. I thought fast, desperate not to lose her amongst the crowd, and pulled out the first question that came to mind.

"Is the music always shit in here?"

I cringed a little. It was a dumb thing to say. I actually quite liked the music, even if just for nostalgic reasons, bit it gave me an opener.

"Sometimes it's better," the man-who-would-be my-sister began, "Seventies night on Saturdays is good for a laugh."

That's when I noticed how differently Julia held herself in these clothes; how she had adjusted her voice. My heart almost froze in my chest, desperate to keep her talking while my brain began to wrap itself around the situation.

"Because I've not been around here long," I blabbered, "a couple of weeks I think…" I realised I'd already lost track of the time I'd spent in the world. It could have been anywhere from a fortnight to a month. "I don't know the area very well."

"There's a better club on Knight Street," Julia said as a young man walked towards us. I recognised him as the man I'd seen her arguing with the day before. I started to wonder if he was even a young man. Suddenly my mind had been thrown into chaos.

"Hey," he said.

Julia turned to him.

"Hey, sorry, I got held up," she said, "bumped into a newbie in town," she turned back to me. "I'm Julian, this is Mark."

_Julian._ I closed my eyes for a moment. Add one letter and her gender was flipped on its head. I felt a little bit weak inside.

"I'm Kim," I said quietly before I realised the fact of what I was saying.

"I've got a sister called Kim!"

That sentence almost broke my heart. _Yes,_ I thought, _you have. A sister you can't even tell about this. A sister whose sexuality you know as a fact because you've caught her with her hand down her pants in front of The X Files._ But all I said was,

"How funny – what a coincidence."

I offered to buy them drinks, anything to keep them talking. We sat with beers a few moments later, trying to converse above the deafening dance music. My eyes focused on the familiar face, just trying to make sure. I knew that there was no doubt about it but I was having trouble believing it. It felt a though the music kept stopping and all the dancing ceased every now and then as I tried to take mental snapshots. By any other name, in any other guise, Julia or Julian was still my flesh and blood.

As Mark went to the toilet I broached a question.

"You said you had a sister?"

"Two actually. Both younger."

I have a nervous smile.

"What's your family like?" I asked.

"Not that close," I watched my sister say, feeling my heart break all over again.

"Why do you say that?"

Julia… Julian… played with the label on his bottle.

"We never really talk to each other. I've got parents who won't even acknowledge that my youngest sister owns a bra."

I looked down and bit my lip, trying not to smile. I remembered that whole _'you're not big enough yet'_ incident. I'd taken her sister shopping myself. She never stopped thanking me for that particular shopping trip.

"You said you had two sisters," I prompted a little hesitantly. I wasn't sure how much I was willing to hear about myself from the eyes of another.

"Yeah. Kim." I heard my name followed by a sad sigh. "It feels like there's something there. She's got a secret and she won't let anyone in."

I stared on. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I wasn't the only one with a secret, apparently.

"Maybe," I began, fighting for words, "maybe she doesn't want to burden anyone…" I hesitated, "when they have secrets of their own."

"Everyone has secrets."

I nodded slowly. Wasn't that the truth?

I saw Mark returning. My head was in a mess and I wasn't sure I could cope with much more. I stood up and gave a weak smile.

"I think I'd better go," I said, "music's giving me a headache." I hesitated as Mark sank into the seat beside the face that I never thought I'd see again, "maybe you should try talking to your sister sometime. Seventeen year olds have a lot more to offer than you realise."

I saw shocked eyes looking up at me.

"How did you know she's seventeen?"

I froze. It was too damn hard not to let things slip sometimes. Giving a tiny smile I shrugged.

"Did I forget to mention that I'm psychic?" I said quietly. With one last lingering look I turned and left the club.

There was a part of me that wanted to stick around and to talk all night but it was so fucking difficult to do; to look at my sister and see Julian, the side of her that she had never shared, and to know that she would never tell us the truth. I couldn't handle it, couldn't take it in at all. All those years my family had searched for _Julia_, not for _Julian_. Never even thinking for a moment that there could have been a real reason for disappearing. Were my family so bad? So terrible that Julia had fled rather than faced them? Was _I_ that bad? My head was in such a muddle, I couldn't get my thoughts straight.

I went home… god, I was even calling that crappy place home by now. I curled up in bed but I didn't sleep a wink all night.

~xXx~

I had to get a piercing on my way to work the next morning. It was fast becoming my escape. This time my nose was my body part of choice. This was my favourite one yet. I loved the little jewel shining in my nose, even though I resembled Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for another three days.

Hunt wasn't so taken with my changing appearance.

"Bloody hell," He declared when he saw me, "whoever makes the tea, you can use Stringer's face to strain it."

The insults were getting to me, I'll admit it. What right did he have to attack my appearance? I wasn't the only one he picked on either. Malcolm might have been a prat but he didn't deserve Hunt's comment about wearing a bar of Dairy Milk on his legs. OK, so those trousers went beyond 'mistake' territory but there's no need to insult a chocolate bar.

"Are you alright, Kim?"

I looked up in surprise to see who'd spoken I such a soft tone. DCI Drake was standing beside me. I wasn't used to anyone offering a friendly word and despite myself I gave a small but grateful smile

"Fine," I said.

She didn't look convinced.

"Heavy night last night?" she asked.

I wished. I'd barely managed one beer.

"Not really," I whispered, "family stuff."

A strange look came upon her face. I think that was when I realised that they knew – they knew something wasn't right, they knew that I didn't belong.

"I hope you manage to sort it out, Kim," she said. She put a hand on my shoulder and gave me a sympathetic smile, then disappeared into Hunt's office and drew the blinds.

They were _definitely_ shagging.

I tapped my pen against the desk. Was that the reason I was here? To see my sister one last time? Or to stop her from leaving? Was there a way I could get her to talk to our parents and be honest with them? Or even to talk to me… the _other_ me…about what she… he… was going through?

I rested my head in my hands and tried to think. Maybe there was a way. Maybe there was something that I could do. Maybe if I did, I could even get home.

Home. Real home. Not the place I was slowly starting to decompose in.

I heard the bleeping of a machine somewhere in the depths of my mind. Perhaps I was finally tracking down my exit.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 7**

For several nights I went to that same club, just hoping to see her again one more time. I tried to find the other club she had told me about but there was no sign of her there either. I knew the date of her disappearance was getting closer and I wanted desperately to see her and try to talk her out of leaving – if indeed she left at all. I still wasn't convinced. It seemed like a pretty huge decision to make.

One day I arrived at work to find Hunt lurking by my desk. I suspected I knew what was coming.

"Don't tell me," I snapped, "Latte, seven sugars?"

"So something _has_ managed to sink into that Swiss cheese head o' yours," said Hunt before he marched into his office.

I shook, fuming slightly. I hated hm. Hated his big fat guts. Every word out of his mouth was an insult. But anything that got me out that bloody office was a good idea as far as I was concerned to I took my time walking to Latte Land, considering a piercing on the way.

However, my plans all went by the way when I started queuing and found someone familiar right before me. My heart almost jumped out of my chest.

"Julia," I breathed. I didn't realise I'd spoken aloud. Slowly she turned around and I cringed. She was there as I used to know her, her feminine form; hair, make up and clothes all fairly female. This was clearly her daytime persona only. It seemed that me and my family had never been able to see who she became at night.

I tried to cover up for my slip.

"Julian?" I said a little louder. I saw a flash of horror cross her face. "I thought it was you."

"You must be mistaken," she said quietly.

"N-no," I flustered, "we met the other night… in the club…"

"Wasn't me," she said quickly as she started to leave but I couldn't let her walk out of there. No way could I watch her walk out my life a second time.

"Julian," I said loudly, "wait," I left the queue to grab her by the shoulder and swallowed. "Please, don't go. I… I was hoping I'd get to speak to you."

She looked at me with anxiety flashing through her eyes and my heart sank. But slowly she hung her head and nodded.

"Just for a bit," she said quietly. She looked at me curiously, "most people… they don't recognise me." She looked incredibly awkward.

I gave a nervous smile.

"Said I was psychic," I said quietly

~xXx~

I nervously stirred my coffee. I wasn't sure what to say or how to begin but luckily my sister seemed to want to talk. Whether it had all been getting too much for her or whether she picked up on the connection that she knew was between us, I don't know, but she did open up.

"I suppose you're wondering," she began, "what's with the…" she indicated her general appearance.

I gave a weak smile.

"We're not all the same person all of the time," I said.

"I can't be," she told me, "not around here. Not the people who know me." She paused. "I'm Julia in the day."

I bit my lip.

"Which do you prefer?" I asked, already fearing the answer.

"Julian," She said, looking down.

I nodded sadly. I thought that would be the case.

"Living a double life isn't easy," I whispered, thinking about my own situation. Everyone around me saw me as DC Kim Stringer, someone who'd just transferred in, in 1995. But inside I knew I was DS Kim Stringer, years on the force, living a life of my own in 2003. "It wears you down. Wears you out."

"You got that right," she said quietly, but even as we spoke and she began to relax I heard her voice growing deeper and watched her mannerisms changing. The physical persona she adopted at night really was the real her. It wasn't some kind of an act. _This_ was the act – the feminine look, the higher voice, the more ladylike stance. These were not who she really was. Not on the inside.

"Does anyone know?" I whispered.

"Not my family," she said quietly, "only a couple of friends. The people I met as Julian only know me as Julian. They probably know I don't really have a sausage down my pants but…" she shrugged, "with that crowd it doesn't matter does it?"

I smiled sadly.

"You can be who you are inside," I said quietly. Again I realised how my own situation reflected Julia's…. Julian's dilemma. Finally I was making myself appear on the outside the way I felt on the inside. My change was nowhere near as drastic but the hair… the piercings… I'd never have had the guts to do that back home. I supposed that's how my sister felt when she went out at night as Julian.

"What about your friend?" I asked, "Mark?"

She had a smile on her face at last.

"He's Mister Unlucky In Love," she said, "he's bisexual… which doubles the chances he has of humiliating himself on dates. Apparently once got so tangled in the handtowels in the toilets here that the waitress had to cut him free and by the time he came out his date had left and left him the bill for sixty three take-away coffees."

I laughed, I couldn't help it.

"Are you close?" I asked.

"Close friends, yeah," she said, "He's about the only person who knows both sides of me." She looked a little awkward. "I guess you do too, now."

I took a deep breath.

"I'm glad you have someone to talk to," I said.

I watched my sister look down; staring at the coffee she hadn't touched yet.

"He wants me to go up North with him," she said, "he'd about to start a new job. Says there's work for me too. I can go up and be Julian. No one who knows me there."

I bit my lip.

"What about the people you'll leave behind?" I asked quietly.

Julia shook her head.

"I don't really have anyone," she said.

I felt like I'd had my heart ripped right out of my chest.

"Your family!" I cried, "your fucking family!" she looked completely taken aback abut I couldn't stop myself, "you walk out on them and how do you think they'll feel, never knowing if you're dead or alive!"

"I didn't say I was going!" she cried.

"But you want to, right?" I knew I was treading on dangerous territory. I couldn't help it. "for fuck's sake, talk to them. Just talk to them. As hard as it is… and believe me, I do understand because I know how they reacted when…" I flinched, "I know how my parents reacted when I came out. It's bloody hard. But they'll accept it because they love you."

She just stared at me. She shook her head.

"They've known Julia for twenty one years," she said, "they'll never see Julian sitting at the dinner table.

I froze. As I thought about her words I realised she was right. She'd just told me she preferred Julian and yet I was still thinking of her as Julia… and as a _her_. She wasn't…. _he_ wasn't. He was a man. It didn't matter what he was wearing right now. It was no more the person he was than my long, dark hair was who I was back home. I hung my head a little as the weight of the realisation came upon me. There was a lump in my throat.

Julian would never be accepted.

He was right.

"Look," I said quietly, "I can't tell you what to do. But you need to at least tell your family. Please, never walk out on them?" I looked him in the eye, "because whatever you think about them, they love you."

He stared back. It felt as though he might never speak again. Finally he nodded slowly.

"I'll think about it," he said.

I closed my eyes and swallowed.

"Thank you," I whispered.

Julian picked up his coffee. He looked a little sheepish.

"I have to go," he said quietly, "I really have to go… it's not an excuse… I've got something I need to do."

I nodded slowly.

"OK," I said quietly.

He gave me a little smile.

"See you around," he said, then paused. "You know, you even remind me a bit of my sister.

I felt a tear threaten to fall. God, I hate crying.

"Us Kims are all the same," I said weakly and then gave a little wave as I watched him go.

I didn't know if my words had made any difference. I could only pray that they had. I'd lost my sister once. I didn't want to lose my brother too.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 8**

I spent two days staring at the calendar on the wall, knowing D-Day was getting closer. That's Disappearance Day. The day my sister vanished, never to be seen or heard from again. Nothing was distracting me; not work, not play. Even drinking at night didn't numb the pain as that day approached. I doubted my words and pleas had any effect. She'd… _he'd…_ leave again, just like the first time.

Work wasn't exactly taking my mind off things. The most excitement there had been was a loud and seemingly never-ending row between Malcolm and Kite; Susannah, her first name was. They'd had a blazing argument about whether she was allowed to wash his trousers in the washing machine or not and somehow this spilled over into the rest of what seemed to be an eternally on/off relationship. From Hunt's insensitive comments it sounded like it had been more off than on at the start and now had gone in the other direction.

I saw Malcolm fiddling with a jewellery box at one point. I hoped that didn't mean what I thought it meant. I didn't want to get embroiled in some pathetic wedding between figments of my imagination.

Finally the day I dreaded every year arrived. Funny how your mind will always mark the sad anniversaries, no matter what you try to do to stop it. But this time it was different because as I woke and knew what the date was I couldn't stop myself from hoping that I could change things. I didn't see how, this was all a dream and even if I stopped Julia… Julian… from leaving then it wouldn't change anything when I woke up. But maybe that was what I had to do to get home. Maybe I was here to resolve this, for me, for Julian, for everyone.

I didn't even decide until that morning. I thought the day would pass me by. But I woke with a determination and fire in my blood and I couldn't hold back.

I went everywhere that I could think of. I went to Latte Land but found only Gene Hunt proudly photographing his _Coffee Drinker of the Week_ accolade. I tried the club, even though I knew it wouldn't be open for hours. I trawled the streets, just looking for Julian, or Mark, or that blue car. Tears were filling my eyes, I was getting desperate. I didn't know what the hell to do or where to try next until eventually the most enormous desperation hit me and I took a step I knew I should never have taken.

The walk to my old family house was one that filled me with dread. I didn't really want to run into a younger me or to see what my parents looked like eight years ago, before the worry and the strain of the disappearance of their eldest child filled their hair with tones of grey. I wondered if the world would implode if I met myself. I remember reading a _Sonic the Hedgehog_ book in my teens in which Sonic and Tails were time travelling and shaking hands with duplicate copies of themselves made them meld into each other. Would that happen to me? I couldn't think of anything worse than melding with me at seventeen, going on eighteen, years old. I didn't want to go through the teenage angst again, Jesus Christ, I had enough angst at 25.

But my feet made the decision for me. It was a risk I had to take.

The closer I got to the house the more I realised that someone was walking in front of me. My pace was faster than theirs so they were way off in the distance at first and slowly I encroached upon them. I didn't realise who it was for a while but the closer I came the more I started to realise who I was tailing.

"Shit… Julian," I whispered.

There he was, right there in front of me. And it was Julian, not Julia. I almost held my breath as I saw him turn and walk down the path. My heart practically stopped. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. He was going to go and face my parents as Julian? Had my words helped after all? Had he listened to my plea?

I stopped beside the gate, tucked just out of sight behind the neighbours' hedge and listened. My heart was thumping and for a moment that's all that I could hear. But then that familiar old sound of the latch on the door clicking off and the door swinging open struck my ears. I swallowed. I could barely cope with the moment.

"_Hello,"_ I heard his voice. My heart was jumping in my chest. I couldn't imagine what this had taken for him. But the next sentence I heard from him bewildered me. _"Is Julia there?"_

I peered around the gate. I couldn't help it. I hoped that no one would see me. My mind flashed back to the day she disappeared; the hours after her argument with our mother when someone came to call, to ask if Julia was at home. I heard it; I heard the male voice from off in my room but I never saw who it was.

And I never thought in a million years it would be my sister.

My mother was standing there, in the doorway. Her face was stricken and cold. Oh dear lord, this was exactly why Julia…. _Julian_ left. This was the reason that his secret had never come out. I saw that now. The stony look on her face must have killed his heart stone dead.

"_No,"_ my mother's voice was taut and frosty, _"Julia isn't at home right now. And, to be frank, I am not expecting her back at any time soon."_

The stare she gave him brought a tear spilling down my face and a muffled sob emerged from my lips. I covered my mouth to stop the noise from alerting anyone to my presence and I leaned against the gate post. Why? Why would she treat that way to her own child? A shock as it must have been, that was the coldest thing that I had ever seen. I just wanted to run down the path and to scream at her – _"That's your flesh and blood! Don't let him walk away_!" but look where my pleas to Julian had gone. He'd done exactly what I had said and confronted the issue – and now –

I peered around again. I saw Julian nod slowly and his voice said in the quietest tone.

"_That's a real, real shame. I am sorry to hear that. I can't tell you how much so."_

Then I watched him turn and walk back up the path, leaving his old life, his family – and Julia – behind.

I quickly moved away from the gate and turned my back so that he wouldn't see me there, then when I heard his feet moving in the opposite direction I turned around. I wanted to run after him and talk to him, I wanted to plead with him to give our mother another chance but what good would it have done? He already had the answer – it was the one he'd known in his heart all along – _Julian_ would never be welcomed at the breakfast table.

As I watched the brother I never knew I had walking out of my life for a second time I broke down by the side of the road and cried. I don't cry. I never have. It's not me. But everything came pouring out right there and then. There was anger at my mother, loss for Julian, devastation at witnessing the event that almost destroyed my family happening all over again and the strongest feeling of homesickness that I had ever felt.

The tears didn't help.

~xXx~

It was some time before I felt able to walk away. Wiping my face I managed to re-affix my tough mask before I got to CID. I knew that I'd be in trouble for turning up at four o'clock when karaoke time was only a couple of hours away but I didn't give a fuck. I called special circumstances upon myself.

My mind went through the past as flashbacks tumbled upon me like rocks down a mountain. The way my family almost crumbled, the strange way my mother behaved all through the search for Julia – it made sense now why she was so quiet and subdued, why she always took a backseat, why my father was always the one who spoke out, appealed, begged for her to return.

My father never knew, and my mother had kept the secret for all those years.

I didn't know how I would ever look her in the eye when I woke up.

That's, if I ever woke up.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 9**

I suppose the phrase I'm looking for is 'going off the rails' That's what happened to me after I watched Julian walk away. It was like history repeating, I guess. I spent a long time blaming myself, playing over and over pivotal moments, thinking about what I could have done differently, what I could have said or done to change things. I couldn't bear the anger I was feeling at my mother for her part in his disappearance or keeping it quiet all those years and I couldn't handle the pain of knowing that Julian thought our family was so uncaring and would never grow to understand.

I thought about trying to follow him and trace him but all he'd said was_ 'up north'. _That could have meant anywhere the other side of Uxbridge as far as I was concerned. How would I ever know where to begin? The days passed by. I found myself spinning out of control. I could have been a poster child for the ladette culture. My drinking increased, my work decreased. I developed what can only be described as 'a right gob'. In fact, I think that's how Hunt preferred to describe it, and me. "_Got a right gob on 'er," _I'd hear him say. Anyone spoke to me, I'd soon put them in their place.

More metal appeared in my face. I pumped more beer down my throat than a small brewery can sell in a year. I'd never smoked before but I picked up the habit – what did it matter in a world of my own creation? You can't get lung cancer or heart disease in your dreams, right? Anything to take the edge off, anything at all. I was _Self Abuse R Use_ for a while.

Before I knew it I'd been there two months. Two whole fucking months with no end in sight. I was homesick, exhausted and running out of things to pierce.

I was staring at a memo on my desk one morning when the words changed from _"Staff Toilet Allocations during Renovations"_ to "_Start Suction; Internal Haemorrhaging."_

I panicked. I freaked out. It was the first message I'd had in a while. I threw the memo, plus ten different items from my desk, to the ground and faced the wrath of Hunt.

"Oi, Metal Mickey," his angry face came towards me like a storm rolling in from the ocean, "I think all that junk in yer face must be screwing with yer brain. Picking up radio signals, are you? Someone remote controlling you to smash up yer desk? No?" I'd never seen his face so full of fury before, "then clean up yer fucking mess and make a latte appear on me desk before I thread shoelaces through those bloody rings in yer face!"

I watched him march out of the office, I was shaking with anger. How _dare_ he talk to me like that How fucking _dare_ he? He only existed because my brain put him there. Why? Why the hell did my head think I needed to put up with something like that dinosaur in my nightmare?

I'd teach him. I knew how. Taking away the most precious thing in his life.

I made a fast entrance to his office, pulled his scotch from his filing cabinet and legged it as fast as I could out of the building. I found a spot just down the road and sat down on the kerb, taking a long swig from the bottle. I wasn't big on spirits but the satisfaction of stealing Hunt's made the slight stinging in my throat worth it. I silently fumed, trying to work out where to go from here. I'd hit my lowest point. I was tired of fighting – tired of trying to wake up, tired of trying to get home, I was empty inside.

And then the feet arrived in my field of vision.

My eyes travelled upward. His coat was the first thing I noticed; dark, flowing, billowing around him. It was like a wall of cloud rolling in or the ocean swirling around him. It was strange but as I peered up at him he seemed almost intangible. Was he real? He barely seemed it. There was a haze of smoke hanging around him, almost like he'd stepped out of a strange mist. He took off his glasses, looked down at me as he cleaned them and gave me a strange smile.

"You look like you're out of place," he said.

That was it; the first time someone acknowledged… the first time that someone seemed to know. Immediately my breath was taken and my attention caught.

"You're not wrong," I told him, clutching the bottle like a security blanket.

He looked at me with an intensity in his eyes. I'd never seen a pair of eyes so dark and deep before.

"Don't tell me," he began, "Hunt. Right"

My face must have been a picture of shock.

"How did you…?" I began.

"I know Hunt," he said, "Oh yes, we go way back. I see he's still up to his same tricks then? Upsetting his team? Being the big playground bully?"

I stared at him as he lit a cigarette, trying to work out who the hell he was and whether to trust him. He seemed to have the measure of Hunt. Eventually I nodded slowly.

"Yeah," I said, "Hunt. He has a collection of nicknames for me – so I decided to nick his scotch."

"A girl after my own heart," he said with a smile, and when he smiled it hooked me in. There was something strange about this man. It was as though already he was trying to weave a spell over me. "Look, you're not the first. But if I have anything to do with it, you could be the last."

I swigged from the bottle.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"He's had his day," he told me, "his throne is starting to fall to pieces. Its time he moved on. No one wants an old relic like that sitting around. It's supposed to be CID, not an antique shop. It's not Dorking, for god's sake." He knelt down beside me. "Look… I want to change things. I can do something about it. Get rid of Hunt. See you all treated right. You'll finally get the respect and recognition you deserve."

I took another swig.

"I don't want recognition," I said quietly, "I just want to go home."

He stared at me. I could almost see his brain working away behind his eyes.

"Home," he repeated, "now that's something I can help you with."

I stared and swallowed. Had I heard that right? I wasn't sure.

"Bullshit," I whispered, hoping he could prove me wrong.

"Straight up," he told me. He leaned a little closer. "We both know you don't belong here, right? So maybe we can help each other out."

I hesitated.

"In what way?"

"Well," he began, "you help me tip Hunt overboard and I'll help you get home to your friends and your family. Your old post." He raised an eyebrow. "Demotion's hell, isn't it?"

My eyes opened so wide he probably thought there were a couple of extra moons in the sky.

"How did you know about that?" I breathed.

He didn't answer my question. In fact, he never _did_ answer it.

"Why don't you meet me tonight," he said, "for a drink. Away from this shithole," he glanced back at the station, "and we'll discuss the details." He got to his feet.

"I don't know," I began but he wasn't listening.

"Meet me tonight at the Gold Bar. Seven o clock. We'll talk."

He left me with one last knowing smile before his coat swirled around him and he almost seemed to vanish before my eyes.

I found myself shaking a little. I had no idea who that man was, but he seemed to know enough. Had I finally found my ticket home? Bringing down Hunt? Was that what I had to do?

I breathed deeply as I tried to gather my courage. Was I really going to do this? Meeting a stranger and plotting against the man with the latte fixation? It seemed my only option. I was going to get home somehow, whatever it took.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 10**

I remember how anxious I felt when I arrived for the strange and somewhat illicit meeting that night. I had no idea who this strange man was. He barely seemed like a man at all, he was more of a… a _presence_. I didn't know what to expect or what he was going to ask of me but I knew that I needed to find a way out of this world before it ripped me to shreds and he was the only one who seemed to understand I was out of place. I had no choice but to bite back my worries and go for it.

I arrived a little late. I didn't want to be sitting around on my own all night and luckily he was already there. I saw him raise his hand to flag me over, a bottle of wine already sitting on the table. I'm not really a wine drinker and never have been but I was too anxious to say so, so I just sat down and watched him pour the drinks out, a slightly smug smile across his face.

"I wasn't sure you were going to come," he said.

I swallowed.

"Neither was I," my voice shook a little.

He looked at me over his glass and held it out.

"To a promising partnership," he said.

I hesitated.

"I don't know what you're going to ask me to do yet," I said.

I saw him sigh, he obviously was planning well and truly ahead in his mind.

"Alright," he said quietly, "let's get the talking done first, then the drinking." He sat his glass down and looked at me seriously. "Hunt's been sitting on his perch for too long. For years and years he's been squashing everyone within a mile of him. He needs to be removed permanently." He paused and leaved back a little. "I need evidence."

"What sort of evidence?"

"Evidence on Hunt. l What he's really like. If I can prove he's nothing but a bullying dinosaur I can have him out of that station before you can say _Latte_."

I eyed him warily.

"Why me?" I asked, "why have you chosen me to do your dirty work?"

"This isn't the dirty work," his face distorted with distaste, "Hunt – _he's_ the one doing dirty work. We're just cleaning up. And I need someone with a strong broom." He stared at me and I felt like I couldn't break out of his gaze. I quickly lifted my glass and drank a lot of wine to distract me. "All I'm asking is for you to do me a few little favours," he said, immediately topping my glass up again, "a few files here… maybe a bug or a camera there… we can put together a portfolio of evidence, together, get Hunt away from that rotting station and you can go back to where you belong."

I swallowed my hands shaking.

"And," I whispered, "where do I belong?"

He stared at me and I could see he knew far more than he was going to let on.

"A long way away," he said, "A place very different to this. You've already been here. Right?" I nodded slowly. "You need to get home. You've got a family waiting."

Thinking about my family, such as it was, overwhelmed me with sadness. I turned to my wine for comfort and drank from my glass until I could see through to the table below. The moment I placed it back down it was full again. This guy was more efficient than a waiter.

"And how are you going to help me get home?" I whispered.

He took off his glasses and stared at me. I wished I could escape that stare.

"Ever think Hunt might be keeping you here?" he asked.

I swallowed. I hadn't thought about that but there was a kind of logic there.

"Maybe," I whispered.

"You wouldn't be the first," he said. "Gets attached, he does. You could still find yourself waking up here in another five… ten… fifteen years down the line."

I blanched.

"No," I said quietly, "that's the last thing I want."

He nodded seriously.

"In that case," he whispered, leaning close, "Help me. Get rid of Hunt and you're free to go home."

I hesitated nervously. I just didn't know what to do. I wanted… _needed_ to get home and I didn't seem to have anyone else rushing to hand me the map. I stared into my eternally-full glass. Memories of home were dancing within the deep red liquid. I took a deep breath.

"OK," I whispered, "I'll do it."

I watched his eyes light up like a Christmas tree.

"That," he said, "is the best decision you will ever make."

I wasn't sure about that, not in the slightest, but I didn't see that I had any other choice. I sipped my wine a little more slowly and bit my lip.

"So what do you want me to do?"

"Tomorrow, I want you to get me some files," he said, "disciplinary files. You'll find them in Hunt's office. I'm fairly sure of that. Pick your moment. I want to know exactly what trouble he's been getting into over the last ten years while I've been…" he listed his glass, "_away_."

I eye him. I still wasn't sure if what I was doing was right but Hunt had been treating me like a bloody verbal punch bag from the moment I arrived so it was no more than he deserved.

"And then what?" I asked, "where do I take them?"

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card.

"This is me," he said, "bring them to the station. Ask for me on reception and I'll be with you in a moment."

I stared at the card. _DCI Jim Keats, Fenchurch West CID._ I stared back at him.

"Jim," I said.

He gave me a charming smile and spread his palms.

"That's me," he said.

I tucked the card in my pocket and nodded slowly.

"Alright," I said,. "I'll do it."

He smiled and lifted his glass.

"Then," he said, "maybe now is the time to drink to our partnership."

Nervously I lifted my glass.

"You don't even know my name yet," I said.

He looked at me expectantly.

"Well?"

"Kim," I said quietly, "Kim Stringer."

He turned on that smile again.

"Nice to meet you, Kimberley," he said.

A frown appeared on my face.

"I prefer Kim," I said.

"I don't," he said simply. He raised his glass towards me, "to a beautiful partnership, and the demise of a dinosaur," he said.

Nervously I raised my glass to his until they clinked together, then I downed the rest of my wine in one. I gasped a little to get my breath back. I couldn't remember ever feeling so nervous. My heart was pounding and I wished my palms would stop sweating. I got to my feet nervously.

"That wine's gone right through me," I mumbled, "excuse me."

But as I headed to the ladies' the only thing I needed was to think. I found an empty stall and sat there, trying to work out if I was doing the right thing. My head was spinning and I couldn't think straight. I was lost and alone in a strange world with a very strange man. I didn't have a lot of choice but to go ahead with it, I knew that.

After I'd let my nerves settle for a while I made my way back to the table where my glass was full once again. Keats was sitting there, the smile across his face looked broader and more certain now. I sat down nervously and turned back to my glass.

"Why don't we make a night of it from here?" he suggested, "we could head for a meal, it's not too late. Then perhaps a club?"

I stared at him a little incredulously, trying to read his expression before I realised this was supposed to be some sort of a come-on. I burst into giggles, I couldn't help it… maybe it was the wine, I don't know. I bit my lip and felt guilty for laughing and I said,

"Oh, no, I'm sorry," I hesitated. "I… it's just, I'm spoken for… back home… and you're not really my type…" I saw his expression change and tried to explain myself better, "I'm… I'm not interested in men…" I paused, "as my girlfriend back home will attest to."

I saw his face grow a little red. I was worried that he was going to grow angry but he seemed to get over it quickly, smiled and help up his hands.

"Good god, I pick them, don't I?" he laughed. He looked at me seriously. "Alright, fair play. I totally understand." He paused, "let's just enjoy a drink as friends, yeah?" he held his glass up again. "To platonic friendships."

Feeling a little nervous, I copied his gesture and took another sip. Something didn't quite taste right this time, but I wasn't a wine expert, maybe it was just in my head. I decided to try to stop worrying and just enjoy the night. I finally had the promise of a ticket home, after all. That was the first step. Soon this nightmare world would be a thing of the past and I'd be back where I belonged.


	12. Chapter 12

_**A/N: I know it's been a while… I'm sorry I haven't updated this since the end of last year but I really wanted to get the story arc I've just finished writing out of the way because I was so utterly undecided about what was going to happen with Robin and Kim and I need to know where that was going before I continued with Kim's backstory to know how to write certain parts. But now I'm picking it back up and will be updating when I can. I hope that you enjoy this chapter (or 'enjoy' might not be the word since it involves Andrew Ridgeley's number one fan!)**_

**~xXx~**

**Chapter 11**

I watched him filling my glass again. Never did I ask for a refill. Not once. In fact, I was certain that I'd put my hand over my glass more than once to stop him from filling it again but somehow I'd just find myself unable to stop him nudging my hand away and letting the rich, red liquid flow into my glass again. Like a fool I kept on drinking – well, I was used to _that_. Night after night I'd let the alcohol blot out the harsh reality of my situation and although wine wasn't my drink of choice I was never going to turn down a free drink or a chance to turn down the pain.

I can't place exactly when it was but before long I knew something wasn't right. I started to feel strange. _Different_. My head was swimming, and not in a good way. I was used to the effects of tipping endless pints of beer down my throat. I'd sunk more of Gene Hunt's scotch than you can imagine. But I can handle my drink. I was used to keeping my tank topped up with alcohol all night long while I danced the hours away.

I felt my head flop over quite suddenly as though my neck had turned to rubber. _Oh god_, what the hell was _that?_ It was like I'd almost gone to sleep on the spot. I righted myself again and mumbled,

"_I'm alright. I'm alright."_

"Are you sure?" he was peering at me over his glasses and there was a look in his eye; something I couldn't read. "Because I don't mean to call you a liar but you don't seem on top of the world, put it that way. You're looking a bit off-balance there."

"I'm fi-_fine,"_ I swallowed. _Damn_, the room was spinning fast, "the wine must be stronger than I realised." I started to get to my feet and I began to speak again; "I'd better get home and –"

"Woah, woah," he stood up as he watched my legs wobble all over the place and gave me a charming smile, "I can't let you walk home like this when your legs can't agree on which direction to take." He pulled his keys from his pocket. "Let me drive you."

I stared at him. Well, at least I gave it my best shot. There were actually three of him and they were all going round in a circle. I blinked a few times and tried to clear my vision until there was only one of him left.

"It's OK," I insisted, "I've heard to many warnings about not accepting lifts from strange men."

I tried to make a joke but I'd never seen such humourless eyes in my life as he stared right back and hooked me with his dark gaze.

"You accepted a _drink_ from one though," he reminded me and he held out his arm. "Let me drive you home, Kimberley," he said seriously, "you can pay me back with coffee."

I swallowed and I stumbled. I tried to keep the room in one place as it seemed to head out on a loop the loop around my head. My guts didn't feel right, and I'm not talking about the vat of wine I had swilling around in there. I didn't trust the man. My instincts told me to run like the wind but he trapped me in a stare that held me as strongly as a air of handcuffs and those eyes were very persuasive.

"_Home,"_ he said.

Like it or not, I was in no fit state to disagree.

~xXx~

"Let's sober you up."

His voice echoed through my mind as though he was speaking into a tin can. What was the matter with me? There were nights when there was more beer in me than in the barrel and I'd still be able to walk in a straight line and string together a coherent sentence, but this was different.

I didn't even remember getting to the kitchen but suddenly there he was; moving around the room, fetching coffee and mugs as though he already knew where they were kept. A mug appeared in front of me and he told me to drink it. Black coffee stared back at me as I lifted the mug. It was bitter but I drank it down. I would have tried anything to feel a little less inebriated by then. I needed to get my head together, but it seemed this wasn't the way to do it because no sooner had I put down the mug than the spinning of the room doubled and my whole body felt like it could just float away on nothing but air.

"_Kimberley?"_

He was saying my name. I couldn't seem to look at him. I held my head like it was going to keep the room steady and took a deep breath but the room just kept on spinning and he just kept on calling me.

"_Kimberley?"_

It took all my strength to look up. My head felt as heavy as a cannon ball and as fuzzy as a bag of cotton wool. But finally I managed to look right up, then suddenly my eyes fell upon his and he used them as a doorway to step right inside my mind.

I felt like I couldn't breathe. There was a strange feeling swelling in my chest, like the strange and needful sensations his stare sent through me were filling my lungs like a plume of steam rising from the bath. And as he carried on staring, fixing me with those eyes of darkness, he reached right inside my mind, reprogrammed everything that I was and made me want to do the one thing that I never, ever would have contemplated.

_To have him._

Like a little voice whispering in my ear, he put the notion deep inside my head until there was nothing that I could do. I couldn't fight back because he made me _want_ it.

Made me want _him_.

And that's the part that I can never forgive myself for.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 12**

I don't know how he did it. I wish that I did because then maybe I could stop blaming myself. I know that he wasn't playing fair; plying me with alcohol, slipping goodness knows what into it, but there was more than that. There was something in his eyes. Was it some deeply buried hypnosis skill? Did he put me in a trance? I can't explain what he did or how he did it but he got inside my head. Worse than that, he put _himself_ inside my head.

Suddenly he was everything. He was all that I could think about. His eyes trapped me and switched off my mind. I couldn't think. I couldn't fight back because I didn't know there was anything to fight back against. He made me want him. No, it was worse than that – he made me _think_ I wanted him.

And so, suddenly, we were in bed. He whispered deep into my subconscious and made me believe that this was what I wanted. It felt like a blur; like some strange surreal dream. It barely felt real. I remembered lying back and just giving myself to him; to that stare and the smile that gave me a false sense of security. He was the only one who'd made me feel as though I wasn't going crazy - he was the only one who said he believed me – he bought himself a ticket right into my trust for that.

So I just lay back and let him take me. I was bare and cold, but he burned like fire. His skin was as hot as a furnace as he took what he wanted. And I couldn't fight back because I didn't know I _wanted_ to. He made me believe with all my heart that I wanted him too.

I don't remember doing a thing; I just lay there while he gasped and grunted into my ear. My head was spinning and my body just opened up to him as he bore deeper into my mind, then when he finished with a terrible cry that will never leave my mind I just felt myself slip into a deep sleep, like puppet who'd been dropped to the ground by its puppeteer.

~x~

When I woke in the morning I was alone. I don't know how long he stayed; whether he vanished the moment my eyes closed or if he stayed and watched me sleeping all night long. As I realised what we'd done I expected the guilt to come crashing down around me but he'd reprogrammed my head to the point where I couldn't feel guilty – I could only feel need for him and the yearning for a repeat performance. I had to see him again. He was all I could think about. I saw him when I closed my eyes and could smell him in the air. His voice rang through my mind and I replayed his touch on every part of my body. He was everywhere.

_Everywhere_

And he made me yearn for more.

~xXx~

I wasn't surprised when he called me and wanted to meet, but I was surprised how desperate I was for it to happen. I needed to see him again, I need to feel that haze of energy around him. I kept thinking about his hot breath on my neck and the sound of his voice as he whispered in my ear.

We met at a café and he slipped a small package across the table. To be fair I was expecting something more than that. After what happened between us the night before I expected… I don't know exactly. Not hugs and roses but something more than this.

"We need to start breaking Hunt down immediately."

I did a double take and tried to work out what was going on. The last thing that I remembered of him was the animalistic cry he gave when he climaxed and fell heavily on top of me. Now back to business? I stared at him aghast, while even more shocked by the way my body was reacting. God, what was my heart doing? Had it forgotten how to beat?

"I don't get it," I whispered. Had he forgotten? Or was _I_ the one who was supposed to forget?

"Nothing complicated, simple surveillance devices," he said, completely ignoring the look on my face and the note in my voice, "like we were discussing yesterday. The sooner you help me get together the evidence against him the sooner he can be turned out of his throne." He stared back as my face fell. I don't even know why it was such a punch in the guts because to be honest many things about the guy scared me and I knew that what happened the night before was wrong, but there was _something –_

Something he put in my head… something he implanted in my mind that made me take his cold, business-like approach that day as a rejection. Why did I care? I didn't want to be accepted!

But as he took off his glasses and set his dark eyes on me like a laser beam he spoke straight into my mind and my soul, and once again I couldn't pull away.

"I… don't know about this," I whispered but he reached across the table and laid a hand on my arm, making it impossible for me not to trust him or to make any other decision.

"Kimberley," as he addressed me I felt like nothing else existed; just him and me, "I know you've seen the dark side of Hunt. You know as well as I do that he's an overgrown playground bully who can't stop stealing lunch money from the other kids. He's holding you here, and I know you need to go home." He leant forward, "don't you?" I nodded silently. There were tears in my eyes. I needed that more than I could say. "Then all you have to do is help me here," he said calmly, "I need to know for sure what he's doing and the best way to achieve that is by keeping one ear on his office."

I stared at the box on the table and swallowed.

"What do I do?" I whispered.

"I'm sure it's nothing you haven't used before," he pulled a small device out if the package and held it in front of me. "One in his office. One in CID. One in his car. That's how we'll start."

I swallowed as I stared into his eyes. There was a burning, bubbling feeling in my stomach as his eyes drew me in.

"OK," I whispered. I saw him raise an eyebrow. "I'll do it."

"Knew you wouldn't let me down," he sent a charming smile in my direction. It was the kind of smile that, from anyone else, would have made me feel safe and secure but somehow his smile was cold, devoid of emotion. Those were not the same eyes that pinned me to the bed the night before. This was not the same man who'd made my body burn.

"And that's all you want?" I asked, and I knew my voice was shaking.

"It isn't what _you_ want?" he asked.

I froze. I didn't know what to say. It was all I _wanted_ – to get home, whatever that took. But what I _needed_? Well, that was a different matter. And as I caught sight of a growing flame behind his smile I knew that he could see that. He looked right inside my mind and knew he'd planted that seed.

He'd made me need him, and that made me hate myself with every bone in my body.


	14. Chapter 14

_**A/N: Dark chapter ahead – you have been warned!**_

**Chapter 13**

I thought I'd hit my lowest point after I'd uncovered my sister's secret. I was wrong. I spiralled deeper and deeper into despair, desperation and self-destruction and Jim Keats was at the centre of it.

That first night was only the beginning. I was trapped in a cycle that was pulling me apart, feeling an unnatural need and desire for him that I knew deep down wasn't right. I would carry out the tasks he asked of me just so he would be pleased and give me what he knew I was desperate for. I knew what I was doing was wrong; betraying the people I was supposed to be working alongside, taking files and information for him – but I couldn't stop because if I did then he wouldn't reward me for my efforts.

He'd tell me every time that he could help me get home, but as the weeks passed I was still stuck as firmly in the world as I always had been. It wasn't until a couple of months after I met him that I started to question and challenge him but all he said was that he was my key back to 2003 and if I doubted him I would never get home. I started to wake up to the truth and I tried to break free, I really did. Every time I saw him I'd tell myself that I wasn't going to give in this time, and then - every time - he breezed into my world with his slick coat and his haze of smoke and those eyes.

There would always be one last favour… a file here, a camera there, a bug in the phone, a shard of information… and every time I tried to protest the spell came over me and we'd end up in bed, or over his desk, or against the wall… or in the cells… or the back of his car…

Or, on one occasion, someone _else's _car.

As guilty as I felt about my behaviour, my resentment for Hunt was growing daily. The worse I behaved, the less respect he showed me so the angrier I became and the cycle just went on and on.

How Keats even got the keys I do not know but when he dangled them before me with that smile upon his face I knew full well what he was trying to tell me.

"_This is the ultimate prize, Kimberley,"_ he told me as he pushed me down across the backseat, "like kicking him square in the balls. It doesn't come any better than this, I assure you."

And while on the one hand the thought of getting Hunt back for his latest round of snide comments appealed to me greatly I wasn't in a position to approve or to turn down the proposal because he'd rendered me incapable to fighting back the moment he locked his eyes upon mine. The next thing that I knew I was frantically scrubbing the backseat with tears rolling down my face, terrified of being found out and equally scared that Jim would reject me now he'd had his 'ultimate' prize.

I went out that night and drank myself into oblivion. I wanted to drink enough that I would just pass out so deeply I wouldn't wake up until _home_ was ready to take me back but I'd built up such a tolerance to alcohol that I stayed conscious, sobbing onto the shoulder of anyone who'd listen. I don't even know how I got home that night but somehow by midnight I was curled up in a ball, crying into my pillows.

When I woke the next morning my stomach was bubbling and churning like I'd never felt before. There was fire in my chest as everything I'd consumed the night before rebelled against me and sent me sprinting to the bathroom where I became more intimately acquainted with the toilet bowl. God, I'd never been so sick in all my life. The nausea gripped me like a hand around my guts and I couldn't hold it back. I'd had hangovers before – in fact I had them most every morning – but very rarely did they send me to my knees in the bathroom. A head made of shattered glass was more my style.

I called in sick when it became clear I wasn't going to be leaving the bathroom in a hurry. I wasn't looking forward to the attitude I knew Hunt would give me.

"_Head finally turned septic?"_ he asked me.

I didn't even have the strength to fight back this time.

I spent the day clutching the toilet bowl. What was I doing to myself? Had I given myself alcohol poisoning? I hoped I'd feel better if I got a good night's sleep but come the morning the toilet was my friend once again. We were develoing quite a rapport. I quietly came to the conclusion that I had picked up a bug – this was more than a hangover – so I called in sick again and hung up before I could get more attitude.

~xXx~

Five days of it. Five days of the endless nausea and the churning stomach. I'd never had a virus like this before. I knew I was pushing my luck taking so much time away from work, and I was right when – on the evening of the fifth day – I received my own personal visit from DCI Hunt with bucket in hand.

"_Here,"_ he said, thrusting it into my hands, "I don't care whether you spend the whole day with yer head in this. You're back at work tomorrow."

I didn't have a lot of choice in the matter. I knew that much. I had to go back eventually, and I was usually alright by lunchtime. I'd just have to wait it out for the worst of the bug to pass, and if I happened to _accidentally_ throw up in the doorway of Hunt's office the following morning – well, he'd have no one to blame but himself.

It never really went away. But I pushed it out of my head and tried to get on with things day by day – I think I would have been safer staying at home because as soon as I was back at work the phone started to ring. _Meet me_, he said. _Bring me this file_, he said, _Home is calling,_ he said.

_I've missed you,_ he said, and then he hung up as though he wished he'd never spoken.

My nights were spent either at his beck and call, brought to bed by that stare and an everlasting supply of tainted wine or spent in the headiest of nightclubs, downing as much beer as I could finance from my wages to forget about what I was doing. Oh _god,_ I hated myself. Every breath I took was filled with darkness. I wanted to get out; I _desperately_ needed to go home.

I was destroying myself a little at a time. I was crippled with guilt from what I was doing to my colleagues as well as what I was doing to my girlfriend back home. I was constantly left hanging on the edge with the promise of being allowed to return to my family and friends. The little sleep I got was filled with nightmares. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd heard a message from home. Was I even still alive?

My lifestyle was taking its toll on my body. My skin was dry and almost grey with bags beneath my eyes. I felt so tired all the time, so very sick and tired. All the beer and the junk food were adding pounds around my frame, not that I cared that much - the world wasn't real. I would go home – or at least so I hoped with all my heart – to my old body. My _real_ body. So what if I gained some weight and my clothes got a little tighter? It wasn't my real body, it didn't matter what I did to it.

The only thing that bothered me was the sudden paunch I gained, almost overnight. I stared at my reflection in the mirror as I tried to fasten my trousers and failed to make the button connect with the buttonhole. Suddenly I had a pot belly where I'd never had one before. While the calories had been settling evenly like a flurry of snow all around my body I'd barely noticed but this was so obvious that I suddenly felt extremely self-conscious and so angry with myself. I threw my trousers across the room in anger and screamed at my body. I didn't recognise it any more. I didn't recognise who _I_ was, either.

What had I become? I wasn't the woman I used to be. I'd become someone I hated. A traitor, a slut, a slob – I stared in the mirror and wanted just to break the glass so I wouldn't have to look at the shadow of a girl with the cold, hard eyes any longer.

I had to break the pattern. I had to find a way out, but I didn't know how.

And then, one chilly October afternoon, someone arrived.

_**~xXx~**_

_**A/N: Oh god, I am scared even to imagine the point deduction I'm going to get for this :-/ At this point I'm not even going to get into the black if I make Kim win the lottery, marry Robin on a sun-kissed desert island, have a whole bunch of beautiful children and be crowned tattooed queen empress of the entire known universe!**_


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 14**

I finally snapped. I'd had as much as I could take. I think seeing the state of myself, taking a good hard look in the mirror, had shocked me into taking action. While I was no more enamoured by my job than I'd ever been and I was just as determined to get home something changed inside of me. I finally knew that Keats wasn't going to be my ticket back and I wasn't going to be his plaything any more.

I needed to be strong. First, I had to change my lifestyle. I'd thrown so much crap at my body since I arrived that I was falling apart. I knew I had to make changes – if I wasn't strong enough physically then how would I ever be strong enough mentally to fight against Keats the next time he tried to look me in the eye?

I remember the day well. It was the first time I'd ignored one of Jim's requests. I had already made my decision when I found the box outside my door. It was full of 'evidence' to plant around CID along with a request to sabotage the Miller case. I shook my head angrily. How had I ever fallen for his lies? He'd seemed so different at the start, that first night he was the perfect gentleman – until his eyes and the wine had taken the evening in a direction I'd never wanted. Then bit by bit his plans to clear out the dead wood from CID and knock Hunt from his perch had changed into a personal, evil vendetta. I couldn't believe I had ever gone along with it.

I took the long way to work that Monday morning. My stomach was still unsettled, even though it had been weeks since the start of the virus and I'd had nothing alcoholic the night before. Maybe the sickness was down to stress? I'd certainly had enough of that since I arrived. I was still feeling a little delicate when I got to work. Most of CID were already out, tracking some drug baron. I was pissed off that once again I'd missed out on the action but I had no one to blame but myself. I was starting to see that now. I sat quietly at my desk, stewing over what to do about the latest box of goodies that turned up on my doorstep – Should I destroy it? Should I give it back to him? I didn't know.

Before I could think it over too much I heard the crash of doors along the corridor and looked up to see the most bewildering sight. There was Hunt, lugging a lanky man in a purple shirt through CID, muttering under his breath about the weight of the guy and questioning '_why must they always faint?'_ I felt a shudder go down my spine. The last person who 'fainted' was me. If this was a habit then what did that mean about the background of the unconscious bloke that Gene as unceremoniously dumping into a chair?

My curiosity was growing but as I stood up to see what was happening Susannah and Malcolm descended upon the poor sod. That was just what he needed to wake up to, I thought. Nothing worse than waking up to a Jarvis Cocker lookalike peering over you and someone else forcing a tourniquet down your neck. I stared for a few moments as Hunt fetched the smelling salts. The fact he had any was disturbing enough. Exactly how _often_ did people faint?

Feeling unnerved, I grabbed my jacket and slipped out of the office. No one noticed. The new boy was far more interesting.

~xXx~

Sitting in the bloody karaoke bar, staring at my so-called colleagues , I couldn't have felt more of an outsider. Again, I knew that was mostly my own fault. Right from the start I'd gone off on my own. I hadn't wanted to know them. I hadn't wanted to get involved. I'd spent my time in gay clubs or getting out of my depth with Keats. Now I'd felt obliged to go to Susannah and Malcolm's engagement party I found myself sitting by myself. No one wanted to talk to me and to be honest I didn't want to talk to them either. I had no idea what to talk to any of them about.

I nursed a whiskey and coke – I'd had enough of the beer for a while. I wasn't planning on staying for long. I just wanted to get home to bed if I was honest. Some ladette I turned out to be.

"Uh, hello?" The voice took me by surprise and I glanced up. "Kim?"

I recognised the tall man looming next to me, although the last time I'd seen him he was unconscious and facing Gene's pot of smelling salts.

"Who's asking?" I asked. I felt oddly nervous. Something was different about this man. He didn't seem like the others, and not in a Keats-like way.

"My name's Simon," he began as he sat down next to me, "I'm… working in CID, just for a while."

I reached out to shake his hand. Maybe I needed to sop burning my bridges.

"Nice to meet you," I said, trying to be on my best behaviour.

"How long have you been with us?" he asked me and my heart felt heavy. I didn't even want to answer that but I supposed I had to.

"About five months now," I said with a sigh, "hopefully not for much longer though. Just want to get home now." I was worried my voice wavered by the end of my sentence. Thinking about home just made it seem further and further away.

"Hunt said you were feeling a bit homesick," Simon told me. I felt myself bristle a little. Out of the corner of my eye I saw DCI Drake staring at me from across the club. So they'd given up on me so severely that they'd palmed me off on the new boy? Great. I looked down so I wouldn't have to see her curious stare. "Hard being away from home, isn't it?" he said.

Yes. Yes it was.

All at once I felt everything come up to the surface. All my angst, my fears, my sadness. Memories of the people I missed. I don't know why but I felt I could open up to the stranger, maybe because he didn't know me. He wasn't going to judge me. And he didn't already think I was insane.

"I kind of liked it at first," I admitted quietly, listing all the things that I actually used to enjoy but when I got onto the subject of the nightlife I almost let something slip. "I was too young to be…"I froze, angry with myself for letting that much through.

"Too young… for what?" he asked me.

"Doesn't matter," I tried to gloss over it.

"No, go on," he urged me. I didn't want to say what I was thinking – that I'd been too young to be a ladette the first time around – so I just said;

"Let's just say I like the culture right now. I hate the ladette label but I like being able to go out and let my hair down."

"What there is of it," he commented, which was the first thing that had made me smile in months. I ran my hand through my hair and explained,

"That was another thing I liked at first. I was in a new place, I could do all the things I didn't have the guts to try at home. Like getting my hair cut. Getting things pierced. Thought the Guv was going to go crazy when I turned up with my eyebrow done. Said he was going to strain tea with my face… but when the novelty of being away from home wore off…" my heart sank again, "I just… felt so lost." I couldn't stop myself from sighing. "I still do."

"If you're a ladette," Simon began, "then why aren't you drinking a pint? That's what ladettes did, wasn't it? Got their hair cut like Zoe ball and drank beer?"

I did have to laugh.

"Like I said, I liked it at first. But after the ninety-third hangover on the trot, it tends to lose its appeal slightly." As I came to the end of my sentence something about his words struck me as strange. I frowned and looked at him suspiciously. "_Did?"_

"Did what?" he asked

I felt my heart starting to race.

"You said _'did',"_ I couldn't hold back, "that's what ladettes did. That's what you said."

I saw a panicked expression cross his face.

"Well… the ladette thing's nearly over, isn't it?" he said with an anxious tone

"No it isn't," I cried, a strange feeling building in my gut, "it's got years to run yet! The Spice Girls haven't even been invented yet!"

OK, so now _I'd _let something slip again. This was like time travel tennis. If my growing suspicion wasn't correct and he _wasn't_ in the same position as me I was going to feel like a total bloody idiot.

"Well…" his face creased up, "I'm not really up with popular culture."

I swallowed. He wasn't revealing anything. I thought back to all he'd said and tried another tactic.

"Why didn't you ask me why I don't go home for a visit?" I asked.

I could see the alarm building on his face.

"Uh, well…"

"_Everyone_ asks me that when I say I'm feeling homesick."

He started looking around anxiously

"Not everyone's on good terms with their family," he said eventually, "I didn't know why you… left home in the first place. You might not have wanted to go back."

"No, _everyone_ asks me why I don't visit or call or write," the words escaped before I could stop them, "it's just human nature. You don't think about things like that."

"Well…" he tried to think of an answer. I could see him struggling. I also tried to ignore _Little Miss First-Aid-Kit_ as she started to sing _One Of Us_ on the stage. The lyrics sent a shiver down my spine and I wasn't sure why.

_#...If God had a name, what would it be_

_And would you call it to his face_

_If you were faced with him in all his glory_

_What would you ask if you had just one question…#_

I took a deep breath and swallowed. It was now or never. I had to take the chance.

"You _know_ I can't go home, don't you?" I whispered.

"Maybe you'll start feeling more at home here soon," he said, ignoring my words.

"You know _why_ I can't go home," my voice shook as I continued, "_Don't_ you?"

I saw his adam's apple rise and fall as he gulped.

"No," he said nervously

"Do you know something?" All my hopes and fears came pouring from my gob in a big garbled mess, "Do you know something about my sister? Or the man who stabbed me? Or how to get home?"

Simon looked more nervous by the moment.

"No," he said quickly, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You're not like the others," I dared to let my hopes increase as I leaned towards him, "you know something. Do you know why I'm here? What I have to do to get home?"

"Uh..."

_#...What if God was one of us_

_Just a slob like one of us_

_Just a stranger on the bus_

_Trying to make his way home…#_

He wasn't cracking.

_"Please, _whoever you are," I begged, "help me. You're the first glimpse of hope I've had since I arrived."

Simon shook his head.

"I'm sorry, you're mistaken," he said, "I was just trying to be friendly!"

I could read him like a book. I'd only just met the man but I could tell that was a lie.

"I can see it in your eyes," I cried, "what do you know?"

I think I must have pushed him a little too far.

"Kim, I'm sorry," he said as he got to his feet, "I was just trying to be friendly. I'm sorry if you misunderstood. I'm sorry you're homesick and I hope you get to see all your friends and family soon."

He started to back away and I panicked. I couldn't let him just walk out on me after coming so close.

_"Wait!"_ I cried, jumping to my feet, "I'm sorry…. I'm sorry if I freaked you out, I just… just thought…"

"I'm sorry," he interrupted as my face fell hopelessly, "I wish I could help you. But you ever want someone to talk to… any time you're missing home…"

It was a cop-out. A bloody cop-out. I hung my head.

"Yeah. Great."

"I'm really sorry…" he tried again.

"Now I feel like a total idiot," I muttered as I shook my head. That was it, another glint of hope extinguished like my last cigarette. I felt as though the floor was melting beneath me as my heart broke all over again. But Simon suddenly seemed distracted. Susannah had finished warbling away and a new song had started. I knew it vaguely but from the look on Simon's face I could see he knew it somewhat better than I did.

_"Oh no,"_ he breathed_, "not this…"_

I was worried by the look on his face

"What's the matter?"

"It's Mike and the Mechanics!" he cried.

Was that _all?_ I pulled a face.

"Ugh, they are a bit crap, aren't they?"

"No! I mean… _yeah_… but that's not…" he trailed off and started desperately scanning the room with his eyes, "God, where _is_ he?"

OK, now nothing made sense.

"Where's who?" I asked

_"Robin!"_

Was that supposed to mean something to me? I had no idea who he was talking about.

_"Who?"_

He seemed to ignore me

"He's _gone!"_

Now I just wanted to slap my forehead. And to think, they called _me_ the weirdo.

"What are you talking about?" I cried.

I'd never seen anyone with such a desperate expression of panic on their face.

"It's a trigger," he whispered.

"What?" I tried to make sense of what he was telling me

"This song," he cried, "It's a trigger."

"A trigger? For what?" I couldn't understand what he meant.

Apparently he didn't have the time to explain.

"I have to find Robin," he cried and blustered away as fast as he could.

As I watched him snaking through the crowd to where Hunt was standing at the bar I shook my head and sank back into my seat. There went my last glimmer of hope. But as I drank down the rest of my drink I couldn't stop thinking about the strange exchange between us. He was like me, I _knew_ he was. I could see it from the look in his eyes.

He might have put up a front but I wasn't giving up because, for the first time in so very long, I could almost reach out and touch my ticket home. I could feel it in my bones.

_**~xXx~**_

_**A/N: I'm fairly sure this is a point neutral chapter! **_

_**God, it's weird going back through Strangers When We Meet to get all the facts right, I only wrote it a year ago but so much has happened since then!**_


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 15**

I watched Simon talking urgently to DCI Drake and then saw them leave the bar in a hurry. I had no idea what was going on but there was something different about that new DCI. I knew it. And I knew if I kept chipping away that I could get him to admit he was the same as me. Maybe he could even help me home.

I looked around the club. Hunt was looking fairly lonely at the bar by himself. I rubbed my chin as I thought to myself about the changes I was trying to make. I'd burnt too many bridges. Maybe it was time to start building a few.

I was not completely sure whether I was happy to part with my money just to shove another scotch down his throat but he did look fairly alone without Alex. I mean, DCI Drake. It often seemed that they were each other's only friends. Hanging out and singing Britpop songs with Susannah and Malcolm wasn't the same as being able to sit down and put the world to rights with them. Actually, Hunt suddenly seemed like a pretty solitary figure. I knew how that felt.

I threw my jacket over my shoulder, finished my drink and walked to the bar where I ordered him a drink and kind of sheepishly slid it long the bar in his direction. He looked at it and then at me.

"What've you put in here?" he demanded, "laxatives? Cyanide?"

I bristled slightly.

"I thought you'd like a _drink_," I said, "you were looking a bit…" I closed my eyes and sighed deeply. "Forget it. Just trying to do something nice."

I turned and started to walk away from the bar with the sound of Hunt calling after me,

"_Oi. Metal Mickey. You forgot the second measure in here."_

So much for trying to build bridges. That was it. I was done for the night. I left the bar and folded my arms, walking crossly though the cold evening air. I stomped. I just _stomped_. I didn't walk. I didn't run. I _stomped_. My boots were heavy and were the perfect accompaniment to an angry and frustrated walk home.

~xXx~

I woke up the next morning feeling like crud. My stomach hurt like crazy, though I couldn't work out why. I had barely had anything to drink the night before so it wasn't alcohol related. The last thing I wanted to face that day was the note I found slipped through my door, reminding me that I had a task to do. I scrunched it up with anger and tossed it into the bin before I picked up the box of crap _he'd_ left for me the day before and took it back to where it belonged. _Return to sender._

X

From there I went to work. I was feeling worse by the minute, as though everything had come crashing down on me. I felt physically weak and sick, my guts were on fire, my nerves were shot to pieces, I kept waiting for Keats to appear and fix me with his stare. I couldn't believe I'd finally left his crap outside of his office and refused to carry out his instructions. It had taken me four months to say no. Now I'd said it, I wasn't going to go back on it.

I couldn't relax. I got up and left again almost immediately to go outside and smoke. I took a walk around the block to try to get some of my nerves out. Then I saw his car; I caught it from the corner of my eye twice. Had he followed me? Was he checking up on me? It took a while but finally I seemed to shake him. Shaking was also something that _I_ happened to be doing at the time. I was starting to feel nervous… no, not nervous. Scared. Bloody terrified. I was bricking it. But I had to keep my resolve. I'd had it with Keats and his trickery.

I stormed back to the station. The office seemed to be empty. _Good_. I needed privacy for the call I was about to make.

Taking my courage in both hands I grabbed the phone on my desk and dialled his number. I knew it well by now, more's the pity. The moment he answered my call I felt like I was about to die from fear.

"It's me," my voice trembled as I spoke, "I've changed my mind."

There was a moment of silence, a horrid silence that could have meant anything. Finally I heard him sigh.

"_You can't change your mind, Kimberley,"_ he said eventually, _"I'm trying to help you, remember? But you need to help me too. We had a deal."_

"No, I'm not doing it," I tried to stay strong, "I've left the stuff outside your office, I want no part in this."

"_You gave me your word,"_ he said, his voice gathering an angry edge that made me tremble. I didn't want to get on his bad side but I couldn't carry on doing what I was doing.

"I know what I said," I told him, starting to grow a little edgy, "but things have changed. There's someone else here now… I think he knows how I can get home."

I swear I could almost hear his blood boiling.

"_What do you think I've been doing for you, Kimberley? I promised I would get you home and I will – you have to be patient and trust me."_

"Well you've not done anything so far!" my anger started to spill over, "I've been busting a gut to give you what you asked and you've given me _nothing_ in return! You've been stringing me along all this time, and tried to turn me into some kind of traitor. Well listen, I _know_ they're not a bunch of saints… Hunt's from the dark ages and Malcolm's suit is accountable for ninety-five percent of sick days in CID…" even thinking about it made my nausea return. Maybe that had been the cause all along? "…but they've been OK. They don't deserve this. I'm not doing it."

"_Then you can say goodbye to your ticket back home,"_ he said, his voice gathering bile with every word, _"we were supposed to be partners, but if you're not going to hold up your end of the bargain then don't expect me to hold up mine."_

"Enough - I'm sick of your talk. You don't want to help me. Find another lackey to do your dirty work." I cried and slammed down the receiver. I sprung to my feet, hardly believing I had spoken to him like that. My heart was thumping and my hands shook. I just had to get out. I ran my hands through my hair, doing anything I could to get a little of the tension out and eventually grabbed my jacket and left the office in a hurry. I didn't know where I was going, I just walked and walked.

I must have been gone for a couple of hours at least. My head was in an absolute mess. I kept thinking regretfully about all that I'd done, all that Keats had persuaded me to do. Oh _god_, the _guilt_ – it was raising higher and higher with every moment that passed. I thought about all the files I'd stolen, the bugs I'd planted, everything that I'd gone along with because of _those_ eyes and the promise of home.

I slammed my fist into a wall when the guilt became too much. It didn't help, just left me with another part of me that throbbed and stung. My stomach wasn't feeling any better, there were cramps that were coming and going now. Was it the result of everything I'd thrown at it since I arrived? The abundance of alcohol, the junk… I couldn't remember the last time I ate a proper meal.

I tried all that I could to take my mind away from my problems and worries. I paid a visit to my piercer and got more metal shoved through my body. I smoked my way through half a pack. I pumped myself full of caffeine in Latte Land but nothing made me feel better, not in the slightest. As I began to make my way sheepishly back to the station I was aware that my vision was blurring a bit. What the hell was up with that? Suddenly I realised. The tears that started rolling down my cheeks were giving it away. _Fuck_, I _never_ cry. But I couldn't take any more. I couldn't take another moment. The world was killing me, piece by piece and I had no way of escaping the hell I was going through.

X

By the time I arrived back in CID it wasn't empty any more. That Simon guy was standing by the TV, getting pissed off with it. He was watching_ L!ve TV _and had just attempted to give the Spanish Archer a knuckle sandwich. And they call _me_ a freak?

_"Blimey, made it in before home time, congratulations Metal Mickey!"_

Brilliant. Gene Hunt, the voice of sensitivity. I should have expected that. I didn't have any fight left in me by then and I had no drive for making snippy remarks back. And after all the guilt I carried on my shoulders, I really _was_ trying to change.

"Sorry, Guv," I said quietly, not even looking up, "had something urgent to deal with. I'll work late tonight."

I didn't see his face but I'm fairly sure he was staring at me as though I had just announced my feet were made of cat food. I don't blame him either, if I was in his place I wouldn't trust me either after the attitude I'd given him.

"Better make that tomorrow," he said, "going to have a celebration tonight."

My heart sank a little. Another night as the loner freak in _Bask?_ Great. I didn't fit in. I was out of place there. Plus I just felt so shitty that all I wanted was to go to bed and curl up with a hot water bottle.

"Don't really feel like celebrating," I said quietly. I noticed he didn't reply. Great – so my attendance was expected. No getting out of it.

I finally stopped staring at the floor and looked around. I hadn't noticed DCI Drake sitting at DI Kite's desk until then. I always felt nervous around her somehow. Maybe it was her strength; her authority… I wasn't sure. But when I saw her cradling her arm, despite the feeling that half my internal organs were trying to break free from my body, I felt so worried and anxious about her. Her expression was a little distant and she looked to be in pain.

"What happened, Ma'am?" I asked, wondering if I should even be prying, "Are you OK?"

She looked at me with that gentle smile she always had about her, no matter how rude or obnoxious I'd been. I began to feel worse. She'd always been so nice, like she was just waiting for me to become a better person. Like she'd always known one day I'd try to change. My guilt only grew.

"Oh, we caught Nailer" she said, "but he had an interesting way of escaping and I came off worst. Apart from his pride…"

There was a furrow in her brow that betrayed her level of pain. She tried so hard to keep it to herself. I wished she didn't feel the need to do that. Bloody Hunt needed to look after her better. She wasn't going to look after _herself_ by the looks of it; everyone else came first.

"Where's DI Kite?" I asked, looking around, "she knows first aid."

I saw a moment of panic in her eyes as she thought about the prospect of being 'treated' by Susannah. I couldn't blame her to be honest. That woman could apply ten tourniquets and not get them anywhere near a wound.

"I'll survive without it," she said.

It wasn't long before the medical marvel herself came back with the purple suited one in tow. They both gave me a strange look when they walked in. I looked away, I didn't even want to know what that look was about. I supposed some relationships were too far gone to build those bridges up again. I could feel Susannah's eyes on me_. Just stop staring_ – that's what I wanted to say. I had been 'the freak' all my life – I didn't need to feel that way now.

_I am not a freak._

I picked up a pen and pretended to work. If Susannah wanted freaks she only had to look in the mirror. _Or_ the rest of the office for that matter. I chanced a glance upwards – talk about a freak show – a woman who was emotionally invested in her first aid kit, a man who made Jarvis Cocker's fashion sense look normal and the new guy who was tending to his bruised fist after he found something on the TV particularly offensive.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone else I didn't know making his way into the office. Some uniformed guy. He looked pretty dam pissed off from what I could see through the floppy, dark hair that covered half his face. He trudged across to Simon who looked up with some concern.

"Rob, what's wrong?" I heard him say, "I thought you were going to get something to eat."

The new-new-guy pouted and looked slightly traumatised.

"I _was_, until some woman with a big backside chased me away with a colander."

I caught a glimpse of DCI Drake raising her good arm

"Happened to us all," she said.

"Yeah, me too," Susannah added, although her voice sounded quiet and distant.

Malcolm chimed in too.

"I've had more colander issues than you've had hot dinners - literally by the sound of it."

It felt like everyone turned to Hunt, awaiting his input.

"I'm not making any bloody colander confessions! Get back to work before I buy me own colander to deal with all of you!" he snapped and disappeared into his office.

No one asked me if I'd experienced the colander of doom. _Good_, I didn't want to be part of their stupid colander bonding anyway. I sat and stared at my hands on the top of my desk for what felt like hours. The rest of the office just faded away as my thoughts moved through so many things. The phone call I'd made, the weird new recruits, Alex's arm – what had she done to it? I glanced up just for a moment and saw her still in pain. I opened the drawer of my desk and rummaged for painkillers. With the amount of units I clocked up in a week it didn't d to be more than ten feet away from a packet of Ibuprofen. I was just about to take them out and offer them to her when Hunt addressed the whole office. I was getting sick of the sound of his voice.

"Listen up," he barked, "today two young men foiled the biggest up and coming drug dealer in London. He's a baron in the making and has spent two years giving us the run-around. Thanks to DCI Shoebury and," he gave a strange pause, glancing at the new-new-guy, "DC Robin Thomas," – that confused me. The guy was in uniform. He also looked about as confused as _I_ was. "Nick Nailer has been-"

"Ooh! Can I say it?" Simon interrupted.

I don't think I'd ever seen Hunt give such a pointed glare before

_"Nailed,"_ he got in the joke before Simon had a chance.

"Damn."

Hunt hadn't finished yet.

"More than that, they brought him in with his pants around his ankles, and for that they get the greatest reward known in the force… A round bought by the Gene Genie himself. Tonight, we celebrate. Bask Karaoke Bar. I expect to see you all there."

The fallout from his speech brought confusion and shock, mostly over the fact that he had offered to buy a round. I sighed and shook my head. That was enough new-leaf-turning for one day. If I was expected to go to some celebration that night then I needed to try to get rid of this fucking stomach ache and also soak various newly-pierced parts of my body in warm salty water. Maybe new piercings hadn't been the _best_ idea that day.

I pulled on my jacket and left. Nobody even noticed. I felt invisible. What was the point of making an effort of nobody event tried to see?

My heart was heavy as I left the station. I was _trying_ to make amends but barely knew where to begin. I kept my eyes on the ground as I walked along, finally reaching my front door and kicking through the fallen autumn leaves just outside it when suddenly a pair of shiny black shoes came into view and I looked up a split-second too late to do a thing. One arm gripped me around the waist while another covered my mouth and my fear shot through the roof. I struggled and kicked but to no avail, and when I tried to scream his hand masked the sound so well that I barely made a squeak.

"Hello, Kimberley," he spat into my ear, "fancy seeing you here" I felt his grasp tighten as I struggled. "It seems you're not longer one hundred percent certain that you want to work with me," he hissed, "well, I think maybe we need to have a little chat about your future prospects. What do you reckon?"

Still holding me firmly, he scooped up the keys that I'd dropped when he grabbed me and opened the front door. As he bundled me inside and threw me hard against the bottom of the stairway I felt my life start to flash before my eyes and a terrible sense that it was all over. I didn't see how I was going to be on one piece by the end of his little 'chat'.

This time when his eyes turned to me there was none of that burning desire. There was just fury. Total and utter fury. And I was about to see the real Jim Keats in all his violent, twisted, bitter glory.

_**~xXx~**_

_**A/N: I don't think I've done myself any favours point-wise with this chapter… :-/**_

_**Heads up, I am probably going to raise the rating to M with the next chapter because I just realised how dark and disturbing the next part is. You have been waaaaaarned! (shame no one warned Kim…)**_


	17. Chapter 17

_**A/N: Warning – the rating has risen M from this chapter as one of the main blanks from Strangers When We Meet is filled in. This is a dark chapter which I've written exactly how I had it in my mind right back as far when I wrote that story. **_

**~xXx~**

**Chapter 16**

I couldn't remember ever feeling such deep fear in all my life. The anger and the hatred written across his face terrified me. This wasn't the same man that I'd known for the last four months. This wasn't the man who looked at me with false sincerity when he promised things he was never intending to deliver. Neither was it the man who looked at me with fiery eyes when he wanted to move things to the bedroom. This was a man filled with nothing but evil, hatred and contempt. For months I had followed his instructions blindly, determined that he was my ticket home. Now he looked to be my ticket to the grave.

"So I got to work and what do you think I found?" he began, standing over me as I lay on the ground, pain surging through my back where his hands had pushed me against the stairs with force, "I found a box. A box I'd left for you in good faith just the day before. I thought you _understood_, Kimberley. I thought you understood that this was the only way you were going to get back to your home and your precious family and friends."

"You were never going to help me back," I tried to yell but my voice barely rose above a whisper, "you found my weakness and just kept on using it to get what you wanted."

"We were helping each other," he said with a sneer, "we were supposed to be working together. We were _so close_ to knocking Hunt from his perch but you just couldn't see it through. Pathetic."

Somehow that one word was the biggest insult he could have delivered. I felt me anger growing and my fire returning as I started to scramble to my feet.

"How fucking _dare_ you –" I began but a hand thrust into my chest and knocked me back down again, then a foot against my collarbone held me into place.

"_No one_ backs out on me, Kimberley," he spat, "you're mine now. You've come this far. There's no way you can go back."

"I'll have no part in any more of your stupid plan," I spat, but as the foot edged towards my throat I started to fear I should have kept my mouth shut.

"Are you trying to make a fool out of me?" he hissed, "leaving me in the lurch when we're so close to the end? Because I'll warn you now, you try to leave me high and dry and you'll regret it." He reached into his coat and pulled out a small brown package which he threw at me, striking me in the face. "This needs to find its way into Hunt's desk drawer tomorrow," he spat as I yelped and turned my head away, "this is the last step. Then he'll be gone."

"_I'm not fucking doing it,"_ I cried before I could stop myself, and sure enough I was about to pay the price as his shoe made contact with my cheek. I opened my mouth in a silent scream, my voice so high that it was hardly audible. I closed my eyes tightly, I couldn't bear to see such contempt on his face. I could feel my chest rising and falling rapidly with sobs that weren't quite emerging and my heart was pounding with a kind of terror I had never felt before, not even as the knife plunged through my guts and sent me to this godforsaken world..

"You're not walking out on me," he growled

"You don't even want my help," I cried, "not really. You could have ended this months ago!"

"You don't have a clue what you're talking about, you silly little girl," he hissed as he dropped to the ground and leaned over me. I kept my face to one side and my eyes tightly closed but he gripped my cheeks and turned my head around. "Look at me, Kimberley."

I forced my head back to the side as I cried out,

"If you wanted Hunt out so badly then why has it taken this long to get to the last step?"

"Plans take time to form!"

"There _was_ no plan, _was_ there?" I cried. This time when he forced my face around to make me look at him again I actually opened my eyes but immediately wished that I hadn't. I could see seven shades of hell burning in his eyes. It terrified me. _He_ terrified me. "You've been stringing me along all this time."

"Your help has been invaluable."

"You never wanted me to help you get rid of Hunt!" I cried as I finally saw through him, "you never wanted to offer me a way home, _or_ that promotion you kept on telling me was _all mine._ There _is_ no promotion, is there?"

"Not for stupid little girls who don't have the stomach for the job," he spat in my face.

"All you ever wanted was bloody _sex!"_ I cried.

"I didn't hear you complaining," he sneered, those words turning my stomach more than anything.

"You never gave me a _chance!"_ I screamed, "You did something… there was something in the –"

He silenced me with a hard slap to my face which brought from me the one thing I had desperately tried to hold back – terrified, angry tears. I hadn't wanted to give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry but I'd reached the end of my strength. I had none left. My defences were in pieces and as he pressed my hands to the ground and leaned closer all I could do was to cry and beg him to go.

"You know what, Kimberley?" he sneered at me, "I think you enjoyed every last moment of it."

_"No,"_ I cried, more angry about his assumptions than anything else he had said or done.

"I think you wanted it just as much as I did.

"I never wanted _anything_ with you."

"In fact, I think that _you_ were the one who wanted it most," he hissed.

_"Fuck off,"_ I screamed, fighting back as hard as I could but his strength was greater than mine.

"Just admit it," his face was so close to mine that I could feel the heat of his breath against my skin, "you couldn't get enough."

"I'm a fucking _lesbian_, you pile of _shit!"_ I screamed at the top of my lungs, and with a sudden burst of strength I freed one of my hands long enough to grab his neck and scrape my fingernails forcefully down it. As I gouged into his skin he gave a furious howl and let go of me for long enough that I was able to scramble away from him and started heading up the stairs. I already knew that was a stupid, pointless thing to do. Where was there to go when I made it up there? I still wouldn't be safe. I wasn't planning on jumping out of the window so what else was there to do? Run to the bathroom and _swirly_ him to death?

Halfway up, he grabbed my ankle and pulled it out from under me. I screamed and kicked out, striking him in the head. He let go of me as he yelled in pain and I carried on climbing the stairs. I ran into my bedroom and tried to shut him out with vague ideas about tying sheets together to escape from the window but I never had a chance. He was right there behind me. Suddenly his hands were around my arms and I found myself thrown to the bed.

I kicked and I fought and I screamed at him, blocking out his words and keeping my eyes away from the stare he tried to fix me with. I knew what he wanted, I knew what he was trying to do and I wasn't going to let him. Not again; not _this_ time.

Finally I forced my knee into _just_ the right place to ensure that he wasn't going to be able to 'do' anything. I jammed it so hard into his goolies that I thought they were going to shoot out of the top of his head. I've never heard a scream like it, I really haven't. And even through the fear that was still burning strongly inside of me I couldn't help but give one smug, delighted cry of triumph.

My victory did not last long.

As though his pain gave him an extra burst of anger and strength he grabbed me by the wrists and turned me onto my front, then pulled my hands together behind my back. I screamed at the top of my lungs but I already knew no one would hear. No one was going to come to my rescue. As he grabbed the belt on my bedside table all I could do was to close my eyes, beg and pray that something would stop him but deep down I'd already given up hope. He hadn't convinced me to set up Hunt and he hadn't got me into bed, so I was no use to him any more. I knew too much and I had to go. Who was going to miss me, after all? As I felt him tighten the belt around my wrists I couldn't think of a single person who would come looking for me. No one would even notice I was missing. If I didn't turn up for work then it would be no surprise to anyone and I had no one to blame but myself.

While I tried in vain to wriggle and writhe off of the bed with my hands bound behind my back he liberated the rope ties on my curtains and used one to tie my ankles together while the other he added to the binds around my wrists, tying the other end to the bedhead for good measure. I choked out one final scream before he gagged me with a scarf, ensuring that even if I cried out no one would hear. Not that anyone would even care.

I sobbed silently as I caught the final look he gave me before he left without a parting word. I had been used, duped and abused to his purpose and now that I had exceeded my worth I was yesterday's news.

No hope.

No future

~xXx~

This was the moment my hell began.

~xXx~

The attack, the violence, the fear, the pain – at least while Keats was there in my home, terrifying and torturing me, I still had a chance. At least while he was hurting me, humiliating me and frightening me the outcome was undecided. But it was the moment that he left, with no intention of ever returning, that I knew that I hadn't got a chance in hell of ever escaping and my despair truly began.

My hope died the moment he slammed the front door.

X

I was left alone with only my thoughts, my fears and my regrets.

In a still, empty and silent house my brain was my only companion and after torturing myself mentally all day it was the most self-destructive friend I could have had.

In the first few hours after he left me I tried to work myself free; I wriggled my wrists, I pushed and twisted my hands, I tried to contort them into all manner of positions but I succeeded only in rubbing my binds so hard against me that I finally felt blood seeping from my skin and had to stop. I tried to move my legs around to a place I could rub or pull the rope against something but there was nothing nearby and I couldn't contort my body in a way to get the binds away. The knots Keats had tied were strong and firm, I couldn't get them to budge at all. With raw wrists and ankles I finally had to admit defeat as the last glimpse of sun fell behind the horizon and the streetlights shone through the window instead.

I couldn't see a clock from where I lay. I had no concept of how much time had passed so I had to make a guess. By the sound of the fairly sober folks chattering as they passed by outside, on their way out for the night, I gathered it was about seven or eight, maybe nine at a push. My mouth was so dry, my thirst raging by now. I wasn't great at keeping myself hydrated and I'd downed so much caffeine earlier that day that my body was screaming for water and I had nothing to give it. The gag placed securely in my mouth was only making my thirst worse. I was also suffering from the opposite problem; my bladder felt uncomfortably full and no amount of wriggling and shifting my body seemed to help.

My limbs were growing stiff; I was so limited in my range of movement that it was inevitable really. As time went by and the cheerful voices on their way to the pub or a club or whatever passed for entertainment in their minds turned into drunken ones rolling home the sensation through my legs changed from the mild twinges that I'd been feeling since Keats first left me into a dull ache that wouldn't go away and then to a throbbing pain that spread slowly further through my limbs.

But the worst pain I suffered was the one in my head when I thought about everything I'd done since I woke in that hot warehouse, six months earlier. I didn't know where I was but I knew this wasn't the world I belonged to. I still didn't know how I'd got here or how real any of it was, and deep down I still believed it was all a part of my own imagination. But if my imagination did _this_ to me then what did that say about my mind?

I flashed back to one memory after another; one horrible act followed by another, on a perpetual loop. They wouldn't go away. They wouldn't stop. I was doomed to spend the whole night remembering my darkest moments; the days when I skulked around Hunt's office looking for the latest files I'd been sent to collect, the nights when I threw so much beer down my throat that I didn't know my own name, the days when Jim fixed me in that stare and made me bend to his will until I'd find myself across his desk or the back of Hunt's car or down in the basement, unable to do a thing as he thrust his way inside of me, twisting my mind to make me believe that I wanted it too.

Jim – _Jim,_ I was still fucking calling him _Jim_. That's how deeply he'd affected me, how hard he'd cast that spell.

As I flashed back to every single time that he laid me down and took what he wanted I found my resolve weakening and I gave into the one thing I swore to myself I never would – I welcomed the tears as they ran down my cheeks, the only small release that I felt from the shame and the guilt. I cried and sobbed until the streets were quiet and the last of the night's drunken revellers had journeyed home and finally, exhausted, I slipped into a dark and fevered sleep.

X

When I awoke the sun was up and shining through my curtains. I squinted a little and tried to adjust to the brightness. There was a moment of blissful ignorance but it lasted a mere second before the pain in my wrists brought the reality back to me like a slap to the face. I whimpered and cried as, piece by piece, the pains throughout my body kicked into gear. The aches in my leg muscles had become constant stabbing pains that never stopped. The binds that tied my hands and feet had cut me until I'd bled. With a desperate thirst and my hydration levels lowering all of the time, my head was thumping as a pain pulsed behind my eyes. Everything hurt. Every part of me. And yet still the worst of the pain was in my mind.

An agonizing wave of hunger rumbled through my stomach. Empty and begging for food, my guts squeezed and groaned, working away at nothing. I wasn't sure when I'd last eaten. In fact _had_ I even eaten the day before? My aching stomach had killed my appetite dead. No wonder I was feeling so weak and lightheaded.

I tried to scream, but I knew my gag was muffling my voice too much for the neighbours to hear. It wasn't like I hadn't already tried it the night before, when I'd yelled and cried at the top of my voice for only a mumble to be heard. My throat was raw and my mouth bone dry. I couldn't stop thinking about water; I fantasized about it coating my tongue, sliding down my throat, refreshing me, cooling me, quenching my savage thirst with every sip. I dreamed of it so hard that for a moment I swore I could feel a glass pressed to my lips, then the moment I realised it was just a hallucination I cried with distress and frustration all over again.

The pain in my bladder reached a critical point as it filled to capacity and I couldn't take it any longer. It hurt so badly, like someone had thrust a red hot poker inside of me. The moment I realised that I had no other choice but to let it go was the lowest point of my life and as I finally released it and felt heat and liquid seeping through my jeans and pooling on the bed I gave an anguished cry of utter mortification, encased within the deepest, darkest feeling of shame. But the gag even stole _that_ from me. My cathartic cry was muffled, just like every scream I'd tried to sound before. I wasn't even allowed that one tiny luxury.

After that point my journey down a spiral of despair became faster and steeper. I'd lost the little dignity I had left which, I had to admit, wasn't very much in the first place. I'd lost a little more every time he'd slipped something in my drink or filled the air with something that twisted my mind or talked my clothes from my body with his eyes.

The hours passed. It wasn't long before I heard the lunchtime rush heading to the café down the street. I listened until the voices died down again; the sign lunchtime was over and two… perhaps half past had arrived. The urgent, pulsating ache inside my head became stronger as I finally succumbed to the dehydration and the lack of food, fading away into sleep. Or did I pass out? I couldn't tell. But I thought that was the end for me. I thought my eyes would never open again and when they did I cried with agony instead of relief. I already knew it was over for me. I was going to die here, alone, in a crusty little house with damp sneaking up the walls as I lay there in the darkness. The voices outside spoke of it being evening again. Must have been about eight. I'd been out for hours.

How long could you survive without water? What was it, three days? I'd had nothing to drink for well over 24 hours now. More like 30… 32 hours? Shit, I had a way to go yet. I still had hours of the pain and the anguish and humiliation before I died. And I _was_ going to die, I knew I was. No one would find me and it could be weeks before anyone even looked for me. I'd be discovered when someone reported a strange smell coming from the place, or when my piercer went bankrupt from lack of business.

The pain that ravaged my stomach was unbearable by now. A good part of that was the hunger that gnawed away ferociously inside of me while I lay there, listening to the strangled, ravenous howls that it let out and the gurgling air that moved around my empty guts. But beyond that there was a sharper pain, low down, that almost felt like the worst period pain I'd ever had. I tried to curl my knees up to my chest a little to relieve the pain but it barely helped.

My skin hurt and itched and burned as my mind tortured me with the memory of the look on his face just before he left me there to die all alone. I hated myself for everything I had done from the moment I arrived and I made myself an impossible promise I was never going to be able to deliver. Just before I felt myself slipping back into darkness as I heard the sound of the drunken revellers pouring back onto the streets again I promised myself that if I ever awoke, if I somehow survived and made it until morning, if I ever saw another human face or heard another voice again, then one day, somehow, I would avenge this situation. The how or when or where was something I couldn't answer but I swore I would face him and I would pull him down from his perch.

He spoke constantly about getting Hunt down from his throne. Well, I saw now that I'd been trying to oust the wrong one. And if I survived I swore to myself there and then that I would never rest until I saw him relinquish the kind of power that no man should have.

My eyes closed and a deep, thick darkness took over. I didn't know if there was a future ahead for me. If there was then it would be nothing short of a miracle.

If I was destined to make it then this world would have to cough up a pretty major intervention.

X

At somewhere around eight thirty in the morning, the world coughed and my front door burst open.

Looks like I was destined to make it after all.

_**~xXx~**_

_**A/N: *wonders if Rant will ever award me another positive point again…***_


	18. Chapter 18

_**A/N: Hello and thank you to the new readers who have put this story on alert since I started writing it again – I'm really glad you're following along on Kim's journey and I promise it's not ALWAYS this miserable! Although it does get worse before it gets better. And then it gets worse again... but then it gets better again… before it gets worse again... oh, I'm sure you get the message! I hope you enjoy this chapter!**_

**~xXx~**

**Chapter 17**

I can't describe the way I felt at the moment that I heard my door breaking down. I was caught somewhere between utter relief and amazement after feeling my life coming to an end and the shame and humiliation that I was going to be found in such a terrible state.

I could hear voices. I knew one of them was Malcolm. The other one I recognised but I wasn't sure who it was. As I tried to scream to them and made a bloody muffled noise instead I had two thoughts that plagued me and dragged me down – _"They're going to find out what I've been doing with Keats,"_ and, _"Fuck, they're going to know I pissed myself."_

I felt so ashamed, absolutely mortified.

It occurred to me I might be worrying about the wrong things.

I wondered if I was hallucinating Britpop bands as Jarvis Cocker poked his head around the doorway until I realised it was only Malcolm. My eyes opened wide and I made vague, urgent noises that even without my gag wouldn't have formed proper words.

_"She's in here, sir!"_ he cried and stood there, staring at me while footsteps ran in our direction. Bloody _cheek_ of it – he couldn't start untying me himself? Nope, he just stood there, his eyes fixed on my horrible state until Simon skidded into the doorway.

"Oh God," he gasped, and I just wanted to hide. I couldn't believe they were seeing me this way. I just wanted to cry, but that's one thing I wasn't going to let myself do. He started to untie my hands any my ankles while Malcolm pulled at my gag and tried to undo the knots. "Kim? Kim, can you hear me OK?" Simon asked.

Could I _hear_ him OK? My _mouth_ was gagged, not my bloody _ears_. But then I was starting to notice that sometimes Simon's mouth shot forth comments without his brain agreeing.

Finally Malcolm unfastened the gag and as it fell from my mouth I felt relief like never before. There was only one thing I could think about; just one thing I could say.

_"Water –" _

I must have whispered that word ten, twelve times even though I'd already heard Malcolm offering to get me some. My voice was raspy, it shocked me to hear it. Simon finished untying my wrists – they were a mass of agony and I could hardly stand to look at them.

"Kim, are you alright?" he asked me.

I think this one word was the biggest lie I have ever told in my life –

"_Yes."_

Malcolm brought me water but I couldn't hold the glass. Damn my fucking shaky hands, I couldn't hold it at all. I wanted to scream in frustration as he held it to my lips for me instead and I drank thirstily for as long as I could. The cool liquid flowed down my throat like a river, soothing my distress just a little. I felt it hit my empty stomach, sending chills through my body. Eventually I had to stop drinking to take in some air and I gasped a few deep breaths as Simon asked;

"What the _hell_ happened?"

My anger started to rage inside of me as I tried to give my answer. As ashamed as I was both of my current situation and my behaviour before it I couldn't hold back.

"Some bastard DCI, that's what happened," I spat.

Simon knew exactly who I was talking about.

"Keats."

I nodded slowly. I wold have done anything to stop the truth from coming out but I knew I was on the brink of spilling it. I had to. I had no choice. I just had to hope they could try to understand and to give me another chance.

"What happened?" Malcolm asked, "Do you need an ambulance…?"

I shook my head violently. I _hate_ hospitals. Bloody phobic, I am. I'd do anything to avoid medical treatment. I'd rather have drawn a portrait of DCI Hunt's hairy backside than go to hospital.

"No, _please,"_ I desperately tried to put them off that thought, "just… just get the fucker." I wanted to use a lot more expletives than that but I felt too tired and weak and needed to save my energy as best as I could. Simon took my hands to check my wrists. I was just glad Susannah wasn't there, I'd never have been able to move for tourniquets.

Actually, that was a good point… where _was_ Susannah?

"What did he do?" Simon asked me.

I felt such a horrible sense of guilt burning inside me. I couldn't bring myself to tell him. I just said as little as possible.

"He… He's angry with me."

The pain in my stomach was getting worse. Maybe it was because I'd had no food in so long, or maybe it was the position I'd been laying in, but it was gnawing away and I tried to block it out.

"We know you made a deal with Keats." Malcolm's words were like a stab in the heart. I'd tried so desperately to keep it secret. How the hell did he even know? "Susannah and me… we heard you on the phone." He said. I hung my head and just wanted to fade away. "We also heard you telling him to stick it." He added.

"What did he ask you to do?" Simon spoke to me gently. It felt a bit like having a friend for the first time since I arrived.

I swallowed hard and tried to distance myself mentally as I spoke, telling them as little as I could while still being honest with them. I told them that he'd seemed so different at first, that he was trying to help me, that we were trying to make things better at Fenchurch East. They seemed shocked when I said he was in charge of CID at Fenchurch West.

"I did everything he said, I thought he liked me… so I…" I was gripped with remorse as I thought about exactly what I'd done, "…if this ever got out back home…"

"If _what_ ever got out?" Simon asked me.

I knew it was too late. I had to tell him the truth. I stared down at the bed. I couldn't look him in the eye.

"I thought he liked me," I whispered. And I did, I really did - the one person in the whole damn world who said they wanted to help –

I chanced a glance at Simon and I could see from his expression that he knew what I was trying so hard not to say.

"You _slept_ with him?"

His voice was quiet. It wasn't judgemental, I wanted to cry that it wasn't as simple as that; that he'd done something to me, that he'd slipped something in my drink and fixed me with that stare and that he really, _truly_ was not my type, but I couldn't because no one knew about my sexuality or my relationship back home and I didn't want to open up that can of worms now.

"He was different at first," was all I could say. I watched Simon closing his eyes as he let out a deep and troubled sigh.

_"Shit,"_ he whispered.

I had to explain more.

"But then he changed… he stopped being a man and turned into a monster. When he asked me to sabotage CID's work and plant evidence around the office I told him I'd had enough. He'd been stringing me along all that time. I left his stuff at his office and thought that was the end of it, until he paid me a visit on Tuesday night."

I couldn't bear to go into any more detail than that. Luckily nobody asked.

"You've been tied up since then?" Malcolm said eventually.

I nodded slowly. I wondered how much they knew, how much they could see, how much more of my ordeal was obvious despite my lips remaining sealed.

The smell of urine, the roaring of my empty stomach, the streaks down my face where I'd let the tears fall - everything I'd been through was there in plain sight. I didn't need to tell them.

"Why did Keats ask _you_ for help?" Malcolm asked me. I felt the truth surging up in my throat. I was sick of hiding it and my desperate situation had started to take away my filter.

"He knew I was different, I didn't belong here," I put my head in my hands. I could see the look on his face. "I'm not a slut, I'm not a slapper," I cried, "I was lonely… my…" I froze. I couldn't use the '_G'_ word, "well, they're not with me now…"

"Hey, it's OK," Simon tried to reassure me but it did little to appease my guilt. "Kim, we need you to tell us where his office is. Can you remember?" I nodded. I knew it only too well. "Because we need to find him," Simon told me

"Susannah's missing," Malcolm began, "it's got to be down to Keats."

I felt so sick all of a sudden. I'd never seen eye to eye with Susannah but the thought that Keats was about to pick off another victim scared me terribly. It seemed that he would go to any lengths to get what he wanted.

"How could I have been taken in by someone like him?" I didn't even realise I'd spoken out loud.

"You're not the first one and you won't be the last." Simon's words were the most terrifying I'd ever heard. With dread in the pit of my stomach I wondered who he'd targeted before me – and who would be next. To my surprise he stood up and held out a hand. "Can you walk?" he asked me.

I stared at the hand he'd offered. It was more than just a gesture to help me to stand – it was the first friendly hand anyone had extended to me in months – and as he helped me to slowly get to my feet, as weak as I was, I knew then that I was standing on my own two feet in more ways than one. I'd hit rock bottom and there was only one way to go now.

_Up_.

As Simon and Malcolm helped me to walk down the stairs and out to the car I knew that only I could get myself out of this world, and I could only do that by being strong and fighting.

And that's what I was going to damn well do.


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 18**

"Where's Fenchurch West?"

I sat in the car, shaking from head to toe. I felt so angry, I just wanted to get there and kill the bastard.

"Get to the main road, I can direct you from there," I told him.

I saw Malcolm giving him a strange look

"I thought DCI Drake said you transferred in from there," he said.

I noticed with curiosity that Simon ignored him completely. The more I saw and heard of the guy the more certain I was that he was like me. The stories that didn't add up, the odd conversations, the backtracking when certain things were mentioned… I just wished I could talk to him alone and find out for sure but right there and then there were more important things going on. I listened to him contacting Hunt on the radio, telling him what happened to me, that Susannah had vanished and that we were on our way to Keats's new domain. The closer we came to the station the more anxious I felt. What the hell was I supposed to do if he was there? How could I deal with coming face to face with him again? It was too much for me to cope with.

When we got there I struggled to keep up with Simon and Malcolm as they ran into the station. My limbs hurt so badly and with no food inside me I had little energy left. I reached the others in time to hear Simon talking to some PC at the desk who was insisting on bringing someone out to show us to 'our new CID offices'. I didn't know what kind of bollocks she was spouting but I knew a stalling tactic when I saw it and I didn't want to get trapped in that situation for too long.

"I know the way," I told them, and asked them to follow me as I moved as quickly as I could through the corridors and up the stairs until I led them into CID. I'd been there many times. Keats even had a desk earmarked for me. I felt eternally thankful that I'd never accepted his job offer. We checked all over the office – including Keats's own, but they were as empty as Malcolm's head

"No one here," he said, "no sign of Susannah… no sign of Keats."

"Dos he have another office?" Simon asked me.

"No, no, not that I know of."

"What about the basement?" Simon asked, and my spirits sank dramatically.

_"Is_ there a basement?" asked Malcolm.

"Keats favours basements," Simon informed him.

I could feel my cheeks starting to burn up as I said,

"There _is_ one… He… uh, mentioned it once… But it's unused."

Simon stared at me with an all-knowing look. I hung my head as he said,

"You did it in the basement, didn't you?" I gave the slightest of nods, not that it mattered. He knew full well that he was right. My guts churned as I thought about it; the heat in the room, my head spinning, the feeling of him lowering me over the desk and making me believe with every bone in my body that I wanted it too. "Can you take us there?" he asked me.

I didn't want to. It was the last place I wanted to go. But I knew I had no choice.

"I think so."

I hated every second of the walk to the basement. Every step I took reminded me of another moment, another horrible second with him getting in my head and taking what he wanted from me. We descended the dingy staircase and heard her; Susannah's muffled screams. We could see her through the glass window in the heavy, locked door. She was going crazy; screaming, crashing around, just desperate to get herself heard. She tried to talk to Malcolm through the glass. It was the most deadly serious moment but I wanted to laugh at their muffled conversation. Eventually she put across the message that he'd dropped the key somewhere around where we were standing but as much as we looked for the damn thing we couldn't find it.

My hands were shaking so much. I could hardly use them to help me search. Whether it was the lack of food or the fear or the nicotine withdrawal, I have no idea – all I knew was that I was getting angrier with myself by the moment for my lack of control.

"It's just like The Crystal Maze, this!" Malcolm's tactless comment broke the tension, _"'…Can you see what you have to do?' '…Can you see the crystal yet?' '…How much time have I got…?"_

Again I almost laughed at the horrified look on Simon's face while he admonished him. As Malcolm finally found the key and Simon jiggled it into the lock, despite its rusty surface, I tried to listen and make sure the coast was clear. I would hear a muttering and some footsteps. I didn't know if it was him or even if he was coming our way but nevertheless I hissed out a warning;

_"Hurry up, I can hear something."_

"I'm _trying!"_ Simon started to get flustered but finally the door opened and we burst inside. I watched Susannah run to Malcolm's arms and my heart sank just a little. I wished that I had someone to hold me when I needed them. I wish that I had someone to run to, to make me feel safe. I wished I had someone who looked at me with that kind of love and affection in their eyes. But I didn't; not _there_ and not back in the _real_ world. My relationship wasn't exactly the tender love story of the decade. We were 'OK' together. But looking at Malcolm and Susannah I could see what love was _supposed _to be like.

"He said he could show me the truth," Susannah said of Keats, "I saw him arguing with you and Robin last night," she told Simon, "He said he could give me answers… I knew I shouldn't have trusted him but…"

I swallowed very hard indeed. That was a bloody familiar story. I feared the worst but when Malcolm asked her if he'd hurt her she said no and her answer seemed to be genuine.

"He brought me down here and told me I'd never see the truth if I stayed with DCI Hunt," she cried, "He said he's eating away at us and he wanted to save us. I asked him what he meant and begged him for the truth but he told me he was waiting until he had a full house to break the news, then locked me in."

I saw a stricken look on Simon's face. I think my own must have looked the same.

"A full house?" he whispered.

We all knew what was coming. He'd crafted it like the script of the most perfect play and we'd followed all his stage directions like a bunch of bloody fools. All we could do was to watch and wait in fear as his silhouette descended the staircase and before long he was right there in front of us, his coat flowing around him like the deepest shade of night.

"The bait worked then, did it?" I felt like I could throw up at any moment just from hearing his voice, "Trap one little maggot and all the fish come swimming round.

I heard on the grapevine we'd been stormed by fools from Fenchurch East and I knew who I was going to find." That was the moment his eyes turned to me and my legs almost went from under me. I don't think one glare had ever sent so much fear to me before. "Wasn't expecting to see _you_ though." His words were accompanied by a smile. "I thought you liked a bit of bondage…"

That was it. Something snapped inside of me and my fear was replaced by a wave of anger like I'd never felt before. I couldn't hold back. I never was the best at controlling my temper and my fists sometimes had a mind of their own.

_"Bastard,"_ I hissed as my whole body drew together the energy I had left to lunge in his direction. I wasn't even sure what I was going to do _– bite him, punch him, kick him, all of the above_ – but it was all academic as his foot struck me hard in the stomach.

It felt as though time froze at that moment. Everything around me stood as still as stone. I can still see everything preserved in my mind's eye like a photograph, a terrible picture that I can never destroy however hard I try. That split-second brought me the worst pain I'd ever felt. It was like that knife plunging into my guts all over again.

I could hear myself screaming but I felt as though my voice wasn't even a part of me, it was just making the sound without my permission. I fell to the ground, clutching my stomach as the pain spread and throbbed inside of me. It felt like more than just a kick to the guts. Something was wrong, something was really, really wrong but I didn't even have time to worry about that. Not when Keats was glowering at us all, with _that_ look upon his face.

The look he had when he was about to bring the whole world down around us.

**~xXx~**

_**A/N: like a bloody idiot I had to stop there because the next part of the story brought me to tears the first time around and was threatening to do the same again! Nothing like localised flooding on your keyboard to hamper your typing, it's worse than snowstorms… :D**_


	20. Chapter 20

_**A/N: Sorry it's been a while since I updated here. I knew the next few chapters were very dark and angsty and was kind of putting them off. But that's all you're getting out of me today, angst and darkness. It's either that or kill someone. So, here's the next chapter. Thank you for reading x**_

**~xXx~**

**Chapter 19**

"I'd be careful what you say and do," Keats's threats filtered through my agony as he sneered, "You don't want anyone to find out about our fun and games. What would your little Sandra do if she found out?"

_Sandra._ I felt a pang of guilt, not for what I had been doing with Keats but because I realised how little I'd even thought of her lately. How weak was my relationship? But I wasn't going to give Keats the satisfaction of getting away with saying something that was never even going to happen.

"She's not going to find out because you're just in my head," I spat as fiercely as I could but the pain was growing so my words held less power than I hoped and he gave a vicious laugh that chilled me to the core.

"Did you hear that?" he turned to the others in turn, "she thinks I'm in her head! A figment of her imagination. I'd watch out for those delusions if I were you, Kimberley. I have a habit of following people home… don't I, Simon?" I saw his eyes turn to Simon and watched him staring back in silence. There was a horribly dark expression on his face. It seemed laden with so many layers of pain he couldn't even begin to express them. I stared at Simon too, I wanted him to speak, to reassure me that there was no way Keats would be able to come after me. His silence was scarier than any words he could have said. "Thought your superiors might have had the decency to tag along though," Keats continued, "after all, this is _their_ mess."

With the pain burning in my stomach I almost zoned out as the others questioned him.

"What is?"

"The truth."

"What truth?"

_"He_ knows. Don't you, Simon? Don't you think it's time you let them in on Hunt's dirty little secret?"

"It's not my secret to tell," Simon whispered.

My heart almost broke at the look of anguish on his face. I was right. Simon was just like me. I saw Susannah staring at him.

"Sir, is that true? Do you know what's going on?" she asked

"If you know something you _have_ to tell us," Malcolm begged.

I felt my heart leap into my chest as I whispered,

"Can you tell me how to get home?"

He looked so pale and drawn suddenly, as though all the life drained from his face. I saw him lick his lips nervously as he lied;

"Why would _I_ know anything?"

The look on Keats's face and the tone of his voice spoke of his own anger and resentment.

"You're the golden boy," he told Simon spitefully, "didn't you know? No one ever receives an invite into Gene's office to get _the talk."_

I felt my heart drop into my stomach as Simon looked at Keats in shock.

"H-how did you even know about that?" he whispered.

"Walls have ears," Keats's smile was like an implement of torture, "well, _Gene's_ do. Thanks to Kimberley."

Shit. I'd already known it was coming, it was just a case of when. However, the looks on their faces as they turned their angry gazes onto me almost killed me dead inside. Bile was rising. If I'd had anything to eat in the last two days I'd have thrown up right there and then as I confessed,

"There's a bug in the umbrella stand."

"And a camera in CID," Keats said happily, "don't forget that one."

_"Kim!"_ Susannah's tone twisted the knife further. I may as well have been stabbed all over again for the agony that my guilt was inflicting, "how could you do that? To us? To the team? To your DCI?"

I wanted to scream and to cry. I wanted to beg for forgiveness. The cloud of deception Keats had left hanging over me for all that time was clearing and all I had left was self-hatred and anger. But just as I was about to let forth a tirade of self-abuse Simon spoke up.

"It's not her fault," he said with the tone of a man who knew only too well, "Keats can be… very persuasive." I saw him turn to Keats with an anger flashing through his eyes. "So what did you have over her? What were you going to reveal to Gene if she didn't help you? Or was it just about getting home, making promises you couldn't keep?"

Keats didn't even seem to have heard. He simply stared at Simon and asked him,

"So, what's it to be? Are _you_ going to tell them or am I?"

"You can't do this to them," Simon implored. I could see the looks on Susannah and Malcolm's faces growing more and more terrified with each passing moment. They really didn't know, did they? They had no idea that this wasn't real. But Simon did. He seemed to now more than I knew, and as much as I wished that the others weren't piling the pressure on I needed to know what he knew. I needed to know if there was a way home.

"Do _what?"_ cried Susannah, "_one_ of you, just please…. _Please_ tell us."

"Go on, Simon." Keats had the biggest shit-eating grin I had ever seen plastered across his smug fucking mug, "Make Gene proud of you. Pass on the knowledge."

"_What_ knowledge?" I had only ever heard Susannah that frantic when she lost her thermometer up Malcolm's arse.

"Please, Sir, don't make us beg any more. We're going crazy… you have to help us…. You _have_ to." Malcolm's eyes looked even wider and more terrified behind his Jarvis Cocker glasses.

There was a desperate sadness on Simon's face as he looked to all of us in turn. His voice was so quiet when he finally spoke that I almost couldn't hear him over the thumping of my heart and the rumbling of my stomach.

"I… I don't know what to tell you."

I stared at Keats as he began to march up and down along on of the steps, smiling callously as he sang;

_"Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are…?"_

I watched Susannah grow angry now, desperate for answers.

"Come _on_, Simon! Just _tell_ us. Whatever the truth is, it can't be any worse than not knowing.

"We're going out of our _heads_ here," Malcolm looked like he could burst into tears at any moment., "just… just _say_ it. Whatever it is."

"Yes, come on, Simon," Keats goaded, "tell them. What are you waiting for? _Tick tock."_

_"Please_ don't do this," Simon shook his head. Were those tears in his eyes? Oh_ god, _exactly how much did the guy know?

_"Tell them,"_ I heard Keats hiss but it was his next act that cast a terrible fear into my veins. I watched him reach into his coat and pull forth a gun which he aimed directly at Simon's forehead without hesitation. This was no man. He was a monster, through and through. "Tell them or I'll be giving them a demonstration."

I saw him close his eyes and swallow in fear and anguish as he knew he had no choice. He looked at us all, desperately wishing that he could disappear and not have to face it.

_"I'm so sorry,"_ he whispered.

"What for?" Susannah had tears in her eyes now as she began to fear the answer, "you're scaring us, Simon. Just… just _say_ it…"

"Now, think very carefully," I saw Keats sneering at Simon with a contempt he'd previously reserved for the likes of Gene alone, "either you can tell them now, or there will be a bullet in your head within the next three minutes." There was something grossly evil in his smile as he pointed to the ground with his gun. "I think you should get down on your knees, Simon." Shit, what was he doing now? Fucking bastard. "_Down on your knees, now!"_ I watched the tall figure of Simon shrinking before my eyes as he shakily obeyed. He sank to his knees and I could see him starting to tremble, I don't think I had ever seen someone look that scared. Not since someone told Hunt that they'd accidentally scratched his car. "Put your hands behind your head," Keats demanded, "I don't want you trying anything."

_"OK, OK,"_ there was a terrible look across Simon's face. It looked as though he had given up, and that was the saddest sight I'd ever seen.

The look on Keats's face was one of malicious contentment. As Simon kneeled before him, no more than a pawn in whatever rotten game he was playing, he had everything that he wanted right there before him.

"Now," he said, "why don't you tell them? Go on - they're waiting for you."

A watched the tears beginning to fall from Simon's eye

"_Please_ don't make me do this," his words brought a lump to my throat, I wanted to know the truth too, but not like this. Not in this terrifying, humiliating way.

"Does it look like I'm asking you a multiple choice question?" Keats barked but he froze as he heard footsteps coming our way and suddenly the two DCIs, Hunt and Drake, were there at the top of the stairs. They froze halfway down as a delighted Keats hooted; "Look who's joined us! You're just in time."

"Jimbo," Hunt's voice was cold and dark. He knew that this was it. He knew the end game was approaching. He knew that whatever secrets he kept were on the verge of making an exit from Simon's gob.

"He's got a gun, Gene," I heard Alex whisper breathily.

"Very observant, DCI Drake," Keats unleashed the sarcasm, "just an insurance policy. Simon needed some encouragement to spill the beans." The look on his face turned me to ice. . "Bear in mind that I will use it I either of you even sends one flake of dandruff any closer. Move and Simon gets more holes that your canteen lady's colander. Hands behind your heads, please." I held my breath as they hesitated and I truly thought one of them was going to be sporting a hole in the head. _"Hands behind heads!_" he screamed.

_"OK,"_ Alex's voice was calm; soothing. Wasted on Keats, but the warmest sound I'd heard for so long. I felt glad that she was there, although at the same time I was terrified of what Keats would do. "we can do that. Can't we, Gene?"

Hunt wasn't pleased. I could see that. _Anyone_ could see that. But he did it anyway, looking as though he might die of self-hatred for following Keats's demand.

"Excellent co-operation," That smug smile was back on Keats's face, "I can see this station merger is going to work out well!" That's when he turned to Simon with the most pointed stare I have ever seen. "Now, Simon, _the denouement_. Put these poor people out of their misery." I watched Simon shaking, his face stricken. How much more did he know? "Tell them!"

Simon's eyes turned to Hunt, begging him to help.

"Gene?"

Hunt's eyes reflected something I'd not seen in them before. It was the one thing I never thought I would see.

It was defeat.

He dropped his head and gave a slight nod which filled Simon with fear. I could see it on his face. He had no option now. Even Gene wanted him to spill the beans. But when he tried, he froze up.

"I can't do it," he breathed.

_"I_ will," Hunt spoke up but Keats wasn't having that.

"Uh - did I _say_ you could talk?" It looked for sure that he was about to fire at Gene. "No?" Keats regarded Simon again as he spat angrily, "He fancies himself as a bit of a mini-Hunt - let him see what comes with it."

"I never -" Simon tried to protest but Susannah interrupted him anxiously.

"Just _tell_ us… if you care about us at all - tell us." Her eyes begged every bit as deeply as her words, "Sir, if it affects our lives then we have a right to know."

I don't think I had ever seen a grown man cry before. Not the way that Simon began to weep. The tears fell from his eyes and I could almost hear them hitting the ground. I started to shake, I couldn't imagine what could possibly be so awful until he finally spoke, letting forth the words that jammed in his throat.

"That's the thing," he whispered, choking on every last word, "it's not about your life." There was a pause, a pause punctuated with one desperate sob before he whispered, "It's about your _death."_

Until that moment, I never knew fear.

After that moment, I didn't think I would ever know how to live without it again.


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter 20**

"Our death?"

I could see the look on Susannah's face, the confusion and the fear. I wish I could say I wasn't feeling as confused as she was but I can't. I was alive, wasn't I? I couldn't be dead. Simon looked bloody terrified, like he didn't know what to say and even if he did then he didn't _want_ to say the words.

_"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..."_ he finally said, his voice was breathy and weak as Malcolm asked what he meant. "You… came here because you died… _too soon_," he managed to force the words out. The pain in my stomach had been starting to ease a little but now I felt as though I'd been kicked all over again. What was he talking about? I wasn't dead, I _wasn't._ But then, Malcolm and Susannah seemed as incredulous as I was.

"Died?" Malcolm shoved his glasses up his nose, "that… that's ridiculous, that doesn't make any sense."

I looked at Keats. He looked like a kid who'd heard there was a new sweetshop in town. The shit-eating grin on his face made me want to slam my fist right into his jaw, but that would have meant moving and that would have meant setting off the pain again.

"Oh, it does," he hissed,, "if you stop and think about it. Think of all the things you've seen, all the flashes of stars, people who just disappeared. People with no past and no family. All the loonies that talk to things that aren't there!" and that was the point that his malevolent eyes turned upon me. "Sound familiar?"

I'd never felt such anger. I wasn't just spitting feathers, I was spitting whole wildfowl.

"I'm not dead," I screamed at him before I could stop myself, "I can hear them… they talk to me on the radio or on the TV…" but even as I spoke I realised it had been a while. What if I really _was_ dead? What if I'd lost my fight? But a voice came to my rescue.

"No, _you're_ not dead," Simon's words sent a jolt of hope through my heart, "you still have a chance to get home, Kim. You've still got that connection. Keep fighting for all you're worth because you can make it."

His eyes were sincere and for the first time since I arrived I had real hope. Not false hope laced with darkness like Keats had offered me night after night, for a price. Not the aimless hope of someone who didn't want to face up to the truth. But real, genuine hope from someone who looked at me with utter conviction.

Malcolm was staring at Simon with a scared, confused look on his face.

_"I'm_ not dead… _Look_ at me… I'm standing right here," he tried to offer all the evidence he could find, "I've got an itch on my leg, I can smell something musty… I've got all my senses. I've got to be alive."

"This is a place where you can have a _second_ life," Simon sounded so quiet and nervous. He tried to offer hope and support but his words only brought them down further, "do the things you never had the chance to before. Malcolm, you were so young, so very young, you'd only just joined the force and you lost your life as a hero. You never had the chance to find love or seek promotion. You never had the chance to live your life…" my heart almost broke for him as he hung his head sadly. "So you came to live that life here."

"The dog," Malcolm whispered. I didn't know what he meant but I didn't question it, perhaps he'd been hearing things too.

"I went to your memorial," Simon's words shocked me. I stared at him, open mouthed, "you saved a child from a crazed dog."

"But couldn't save myself."

"So you came here," Simon whispered.

"Guv?" Susannah's voice was shaking as she stared at Hunt. I was so used to seeing her confident and headstrong. This came as quite a revelation, "it's not true, is it? Please say it isn't?"

But the grim look on his face said it all.

"It's true."

"Ma'am?" all eyes turned to Alex in the hope she had a different answer but she looked hollow, devastated and full of sadness.

"Susannah, it's OK," she said softly, but Susannah knew that hope had not only faded, it had permanently disappeared down the bog.

_"No… no, no… it's not true…"_

Hunt finally began to take centre stage, About bloody time too. If this world belonged to him then he should have been the one to explain it all.

"This is a halfway house, Kite. You come here to play out yer life as you need to and then you can move on with no regrets."

"But they're _not_ moving on though, are they?" Keats opened his big, fat gob again, "why _is_ that, Hunt? What's so special about these two? It's not like the last time you ended up carrying a couple of morons for years because back then you didn't remember. But this time I know you do. _she's_ here to help you remember." He nodded at Alex, "You've sent others onward. So why not these two?"

Hunt didn't say anything. He just stared. What the fuck was the _matter_ with him? Malcolm wasn't going to just let it go. He spoke up, called him to task over it.

"All this time… I've spent a decade working with you and that whole time you were lying to me, every single day."

"Nobody lied to you," Alex spoke up, "there were just things we couldn't tell you until the time was right. Until you were ready."

Susannah was shaking. This was insane. We were all a nervous wreck.

"None of this is real?" she whispered.

"It's real," Simon promised her. I could see tears falling. "I know how real it is. I've been back and forth, there's no difference…. There's pleasure and pain, you can love and you can hate, you can laugh and cry."

Susannah didn't seem satisfied.

"But it's not _real_, none of this exists. My career, my relationship, my home… I don't really have any of them! I don't have anything at all!"

But as I watched, her Jarvis Cocker fiancé reached out and held her hand.

"Some of it is real," he whispered.

God, that just about did it. I'm not a soppy sap, I don't have a lot of time for emotion or romance but in that moment I couldn't help but wish that I'd meet someone who'd do the same for me. I realised that even though I loved my girlfriend there was a difference between loving someone and being _in_ love with them. From what I'd seen of Malcolm, _and_ Susannah, I knew only too well which was the case between them.

"I'm so sorry," was all that Simon could offer.

"I don't want to feel like this anymore," Susannah whispered.

Keats looked as though he could just about explode with excitement.

"You see? This is why I needed to get you away from DCI Hunt. he'll spend forever lying to you and stringing you along."

I watched in horror as he began an anti-Gene tirade. The man wasn't exactly my best buddy pal but _Jesus_, he didn't deserve that. One by one Keats addressed us, made us promises I knew he wasn't going to keep, offered us the world on a stick. He'd have done anything to take us away from Fenchurch East and use us for his own good. But when it came down to it, we could all see through him. Every one of us. But I still had questions. There were things I didn't understand. I needed to ask, as much as I knew it would hurt.

"If they're dead, then what am _I_ doing here?"

"Hitchhiking," Hunt said gruffly and I was about to offer him a fist in the chin for talking bollocks but Alex spoke up. Her voice was quiet and soothing. There was always something her, the way that she spoke.

"You had some things to work through," she told me, "so while your body is trying to heal you came here to lay the skeletons in your closet to rest."

I felt tears beginning to fill my own eyes. _Damnit, damnit, damnit._

"About my sister?" I whispered, shocked by how weak my voice sounded.

"Yes."

Oh God, and there it was – a sob. How humiliating. They'd heard it now though, there was nothing I could do. The aguish was killing me as I whispered,

"How do I know that I'm ever going to get home?"

"You just have to keep fighting," Alex urged me. She looked at me with such sincerity, I felt as though someone actually _wanted_ me to make it back. That was a feeling that lifted my spirits more than anything since the moment I opened my eyes to the nineties.

"You're never going home," Keats sneered, but Simon spoke up, loud and strong.

_"I_ did," he said, "I got home when I was here before. And so has Robin."

"Robin?" Malcolm frowned, "…where _is_ Robin?"

"He's home," I saw Simon give in to a tiny smile, "he made it back."

"How… how do you know?" I hated how shaky my voice sounded as I asked him.

Simon turned to me.

"Last night, he vanished - just like that. His body healed, his soul solved what he was here to do and he went home."

"Just like that?" I asked, scarcely believing it could ever be so easy.

"He was strong enough to get there, and you can do it too. Just keep fighting. Keep fighting to get home, just like I am."

That was when I saw just how alike we really were.

"You're trying to get home too," I whispered.

He had a look of utter determination on his face,

"And I'll make it. I know I'll get back again. It's my turn to go home now."

And as he said those words u believed the,. I could see his determination and I believed with every bone in my body that Simon too would find his way home. And then –

Then.

Keats wiped it out with one single laugh.

_"Ha!"_

With that, my hope for Simon sank faster than Geoff in a dinghy.


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter 21**

As soon as he gave that laugh, I knew. I don't know how but I did. Maybe I'd come to know him too well. That was a truly horrible thought. I watched Simon turn to him angrily.

"Something funny, Keats?" he snapped.

The laugh Keats gave was enough to chill me to the bone.

"Just laughing at your joke," he sneered, "fighting… getting home… brilliant stuff."

I could see Simon's anger growing but from the look on Keats's face I knew things were going to turn sour fast.

"You think I'm joking?" Simon cried, "I'm going to do every single thing I can to get out of this place and get back to Robin's side."

"The devoted boyfriend."

"Fiancé, actually, we just got engaged last night."

I've never seen a face light up so fast.

_"Oh!_ It's all so _tragic!"_

_"What_ is?" Simon's volume rose, "Well?"

I watched Keats turn to Alex and the Guv. That's when I saw their faces, absolutely frozen with knowledge they wished they didn't have. He was so bloody sneaky, so clever, looking at them made Simon do the same.

"Oh dear," he mocked, "you mean they haven't told you?" he glowered at them, "Hunt? Drake? You keeping Simon in the dark?"

Simon started to look scared now.

"Told me what?" He saw the looks on their faces and he pales visibly,_ "What?"_

I think watching the truth dawn on Simon was one of the hardest things I've ever had to witness. Seeing his face fall as he slowly came to unravel the clues; the looks on the faces of Keats, Alex and Hunt, all that he'd been through. I felt my own heart breaking and even though I barely knew the guy my eyes were filling with tears.

He'd lost his battle out there.

He was dead.

_"No,"_ I could hear the anguish in his voice as he shook his head and pleaded, _"no…. no, Keats, it's not true."_

_"Isn't_ it?" Keats looks like it was Christmas morning and he'd just unwrapped a great big fucking coffin-sized present. I just wanted to punch his fucking lights out but I couldn't even move. Between the pain in my guts and the tension in the room I was staying put. All I could do was watch as Simon turned from Hunt to Alex in turn, begging and pleading with them to tell him that Keats was wrong or lying to his face but gene's desolate expression and Alex's tears soon told him that Keats – for once – was telling the goddamned truth.

"B-but the messages," he whispered, his voice broken and desperate, "I had messages…"

"You heard _Robin's_ messages," Alex told him.

"Yeah, Robin's and _mine."_

"Did you ever hear a message about _you_, Simon?" Alex whispered gently, "even once?"

The last hint of hope on his expression disappeared faster than a bottle of scotch in hunt's filing cabinet.

"No… It's not true," he whispered.

"You need proof?"

I should have known Keats would pipe up again. I wondered what the hell he could do to prove it to Simon but I soon got my answer. There was a click and a fizz as an old, dusty TV set sparked into life. I almost fainted when I saw_ L!ve TV _appeared. I'd loved that channel so much when I was in my teens. God, such happy memories of watching _Topless Darts_ when I was supposed to be studying. Nothing half as pleasant this time though. All I could see was the newsreader with that giant bloody pink bunny loafing around behind her.

_"…and finally, the funeral of detective chief inspector Simon Shoebury was held in East London this morning."_

Oh shit.

Until that moment there had been a part of me fighting not to believe it. A part of me that was desperately trying not to accept the truth. But in that instant, the hope faded and died, just as Simon's body had done on the other side of the line.

_"DCI Shoebury and his colleague and partner Police Inspector Robin Thomas were involved in a serious road accident one week ago. They were chasing notorious drug baron Nicholas Nailer when it is thought their car hit a fallen tree and flipped over several times."_

The fucking pink bunny was at it in the background, looking all shocked at the news. Why ever had they thought that git was a good idea?

_"Despite all efforts to revive him, ambulance crews failed to resuscitate him and he was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident at eleven forty-eight a.m. A post-mortem revealed massive internal injuries and a previous brain injury that was aggravated by the accident led to his death. His partner, Sergeant Thomas, has awoken from a week-long coma today. Despite being a stable condition he has not been assessed as strong enough to be given the news about his boyfriend's death or to attend the funeral."_

I couldn't believe what I was seeing or hearing. It felt like with every word out the newsreader's mouth Simon received another blow. Keats might as well have stuck his boot into _him_ as well for all the pain on his face as he walked like a zombie to the screen and dropped to his knees before it. I could almost see his heart breaking right there and then.

_"A memorial service for DCI Shoebury will be held by his colleagues next week. Anyone wishing to pay their respects is welcome to attend. Simon was best known for;-" _

That was as far as the woman got before static took over and Simon had nothing to keep his attention on the screen. He turned around, trembling, to face the Guv.

"You _knew_ about this?" he whispered.

"It was best you didn't know, Simon."

I don't think I'd ever heard Hunt's voice so honest, so human. It shocked me. It really did. Until that point all I had seen was the cold, steely exterior who'd shot down every mention of that world not being real. It was a revelation to be honest.

"How is that best?" cried Simon, "I spent the last three days doing everything in my power to help Robin get home… to help us _both_ get home…"

"And you did," I looked at Alex as she spoke. She seemed so devastated for him. It was almost as though she knew how he felt, "you got Robin back home."

"But if I'd known I could have done things differently… I could have changed things, persuaded him to stay."

"Yes," she whispered to him, "maybe you could have done that. But it wouldn't have been right. That's not your call. It wasn't his time."

I hung my head as I listened to her words and realised how precarious our whole existence was; the line between life and death so thin and fragile.

"Beautiful irony, isn't it?" Keats opened his bloody gob again. What I wouldn't have done to kick him square in it and rid him of a few teeth, "there you were, giving your little dead friends that lovely speech about how real everything is here and all along you were just the same as them."

_"Fuck_ off, Keats," I saw a different side of Simon as he spat with anger, "just do us all a favour and go play at the bottom of the Thames."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that if I were you," Keats began, "you need me more now than ever."

Oh, I knew it was coming… and I was right. The lies spilled forth, making promises he was never going to keep, promising to reunite Simon with his fiancé, telling him they'd make a good team. I wanted to warn Simon not to listen but he was already a step ahead of me.

"You'll say _anything_ to try to take me, won't you?" Just because I was the one that got away?" My mouth fell open as I watched Simon pacing towards him, even though Keats's gun was still aimed in his direction, "Oh for God's sake, Keats, what do you think you're going to do with that? I'm already dead - I've got nothing to lose."

"_You_ haven't…" Keats glowered as he turned his gun on Alex, "But _she_ has." I almost gasped out loud. I felt terrified for her. I was surprised how fond I'd started to become of the stunning DCI. _Shit_, did I really say that? Not what I should have been thinking about under the circumstances. "If I pull this trigger now," Keats continued, "back in her hospital bed, she flatlines. Gone. _Dead!"_

I realised there and then that Alex was just like me. She was still alive somewhere out there. Then why had she been stuck in that place for all those years? Didn't she _want_ to go home?

"So," Hunt spoke up, "how do we resolve this scene, Jimbo? We can't all stand in your basement forever with a gun changing targets every few minutes, can we?" We all held our breath as he paused. "So, what d'you want? Really want?"

"What do I want?"

"Yer rules seem to keep changing… first you want Kite and Malcolm here to come and join you, then you want to give Metal Mickey a promotion, then you promise Shoebury impossible conditions of he comes and works with your team - and yet _Alex_ is the one with a gun pointing at her head. What sense do we make of that, Jimbo?"

"Are you that stupid?"

"I don't know," Hunt began, "have I paid me dues to the Jim Keats Fan Club for this month?" he paused and looked around. "No? Well I can't be that stupid then, can I?"

Suddenly he was going up in my estimation.

"I've already got what I wanted," Keats told him, "now this collection of walking corpses are the added extras," he stared at us all, "no offence."

"What did you want?"

"My own domain." There was a chilling smile on his face as he spoke.

"Your what?"

"All I ever hear from you is _my world_ this and _my domain_ that," Keats spat bitterly at Hunt, "you ruled over Fenchurch East like some sort of half-pickled God. Well guess what, Gene? Now I've got own kingdom to rule over. I've got my own team. That's the only advantage you had over me, Hunt. The benefit of others. Now we're equal."

"I wouldn't say that," Hunt drew closer to him, "I'm sure there are… _some_ departments you can't measure up on." I almost sniggered as I saw him stand legs-apart to leave Keats in no doubt which department he meant. The look on Keats's face was worth it alone.

"Oh yeah?" he matched Hunt's pose exactly, "why don't you ask your missus about that? Eh?"

All eyes turned to Alex

"What-?"

"Don't you remember, Alex?" his sneer sent shivers down my spine, "Back when we were working together?"

"We've _never_ worked together," Alex hissed.

"Just been promoted to DCI," Keats had that smile on his face again, "got transferred to my new department. There we were, alone in our new little office. You couldn't keep your hands off me."

A moment later Alex said the words that made me want to throw my arms around her, to cry with her, to make it all better.

_"You drugged me,"_ she whispered.

My heart sank and I felt like I could throw up on the spot. There were tears welling in my eyes as I heard him say;

"You believe what you want to, sweetheart."

"You filled the room with nitrous oxide and you _drugged_ me," Alex sounded bolder; stronger. My brain could hardy take it in. For the first time it began to dawn on me exactly what he'd done to me and how he'd done it.

"Oh, he DID, did he?" Simon seemed to double in height as his anger overflowed, "this seems to be a habit with you, Keats, _doesn't_ it?"

"What do you mean?" Alex's voice shook.

"You're not the only one this lunatic has drugged."

It felt like a stab in the heart as I heard Simon speak. Oh _no, no, no_, not another one…

"Oh Simon," Alex sounded more scared than I'd ever heard, "he didn't…. did he?"

"Not quite," Simon spat, "but he made me _think_ he had. Set up everything, just right. Condom wrapper on the bedside table, stripped me naked…"

I wanted to kill him. I wanted to string up the bastard there and then. But my stomach was still filled with pain so I couldn't do any such thing.

"That the only way you can get a fumble with someone is it?" Hunt asked, "slip 'em something and set Little Jimbo on the loose?"

I couldn't hold back my words any longer.

"That… wine…" I thought back to the first time… the night he took me out… and suddenly things slotted into place, "what… was in that _wine_…?"

"N-nothing," there was a note of fear in his voice for the first time, "don't believe everything they say about me. _She's_ trying to cover up for cheating on the head honcho and _he's_ just pissed off because my bread's not buttered that side!"

I wanted to say more… I wanted to yell and to scream and to put in no uncertain terms the truth of what he did to me, but the TV burst into life again taking my chance away.

_"…Simon was best known for saving fellow officer DCI Alex Drake from an attempt to end her life…"_

_Ccccsssssssshhhhhhhkkkkkkk!_

_"…was carried out by DCI James Keats, known as Jim. He has a record of psychotic acts and…."_

_Ccccsssssshhhhkkkkkk!_

I stared in shock and fear along with the others and the TV cut in and out, spewing fragments of truth .

_"…Spent several years in a coma…"_

_FFFFZZZZT!_

_"…had extreme emotional issues brought on by his…."_

_FFFFZZZTTT!_

"No," I couldn't believe the fear in Keats' voice as he spoke.

_"… Keats died as Shoebury acted to save her from being suffocated in her hospital bed…"_

He reached out to switch off the TV but nothing happened.

"Come on," he practically started to beat the damn thing up but nothing happened.

_FFFFZZZTTT!_

_"…funeral was held four days later. There were no mourners…"_

_FFFFZZZTTT!_

_"…was hailed a hero. An investigation is still underway into how someone like Keats was put in charge of…"_

"No… _NO!" _

"I'm not fond of bad news either," Hunt said as he stepped up behind him. I heard Keats gasp as he turned around and found him standing there which gave me some satisfaction but not nearly as much as it did when I saw Hunt punch him in the guts. I wanted to cheer but at that precise moment an alarm started going off and all hell broke loose. "Bolly, get them all out!" Gene cried as he punched Keats for a second time.

Alex quickly began to hustle us out of the basement and up the stairs, as fast as we could go, but I'd only made a couple of steps when the pain in my guts started to worsen. It was every bit as bad as the knife wound that sent me to 1995 in the first place and it was getting worse. What the _fuck_ had he _done_ to me? I didn't know. I just blindly stumbled along with the mass of distraught detectives as we cleared out of the basement and made our way up to the foyer of the station.

I thought we'd come through the worst of it. But for me, the tragedy was only about to begin.

_**~xXx~**_

_**A/N: Thank you so much for reading, and especially bit thanks to Charlotte for your review :)**_


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter 22**

By the time I staggered to reception with everyone else the pain had doubled. I'd never felt anything like this before. While I was staying still in one place it hadn't been as bad but I suppose moving had really set it off. I guess I knew deep down there was something more wrong with me than just a kick to the stomach but I didn't want to think about it. I was in a place that wasn't even real. I was in some sort of bloody afterlife. Nothing could be _seriously_ wrong. I couldn't die here, could I?

_Could _I?

I tried to look around me but my pain was so bad that I could hardly lift my head. I was aware of the alarms still ringing but no one seemed to be leaving the building, they were just wandering around, some looking more frantic than others. I heard someone mention that a suspect had escaped but I couldn't have cared less. It took everything I had to stay upright.

I caught sight of Hunt dragging Keats along by the cuffs on his wrist and vaguely heard the others arguing about who was going to sit on him to prevent the bastard from absconding. Funnily enough no one seemed to want that task.

"I hear Kim's already _been there, done that_ though."

Oooh, that snooty bloody cow. _Susannah_. I'd never managed to get along with her. Personality clash suppose. Although after what I'd done to the team I couldn't blame her for that dig. I mumbled something about it being a cheap shot and dropped onto the edge of a giant plant pot from which a terrifyingly large yucca plant was growing. I couldn't stay on my feet any longer. The pain intensified, coming in waves, growing ever stronger until I wasn't sure how I was even still alive. Somewhere in the distance I thought I heard some kind of beeping, a different alarm and shouting voices but it felt like it was all in my head.

I just about managed to look up. Everyone was in a mess. I couldn't blame them. I wasn't much better off. I think I zoned out for a while, the pain filtering out everything else around me. I don't even know how long I'd been sitting there, trying to block out the agony when I heard a voice.

"Kim, are you alright?"

It was Simon. He was standing beside me. I tried to look at him but couldn't quite manage it. I couldn't bear to show weakness. I hated it, it wasn't me. He'd already seen me at my lowest when he found me tied and gagged that morning. I couldn't stand people seeing me dragged down all over again.

"I'm just being soft," I told him, trying to convince myself of that fact; "he kicked me in the guts. I thought I was OK until I ran up the stairs, then the pain came back." I hesitated as another wave of pain cut me off, "_badly."_

"Do you need an ambulance?" he asked me but I shook my head. The last thing I needed was a trip to bloody hospital.

"Don't be stupid," I told him, "I'm fine."

I glanced at him and saw a strange expression on his face. Had he read my refusal as being rude? God, I hoped not. I didn't want him to think that but I had to try to build up my strength and my reputation again. I couldn't worry about Simon right then. I couldn't care too much about what he thought. All I could focus on was the pain radiating out from my guts. It felt like being stabbed all over again.

I felt like faded in and out… I was aware that Keats escaped his handcuffs but that didn't exactly surprise me. I was shocked by how little I cared. I couldn't focus my strength on worrying about him. I had to make it beyond the pain first. I remember that Hunt walked right into a door at one point. That was the highlight for me. OK, maybe I was starting to warm to him a little but it was still no more than he deserved for all the months of taunts about my piercings.

But then things blew up. Susannah and Malcolm… I'd never heard them challenge Hunt before. But now they knew the world wasn't all they'd thought it to be they couldn't help it. '_What's the point?' _they challenged. And I could see that, I could see their way of thinking. It wasn't '_real'_ real, after all. But as the pain reached its peak I had to question their argument. Because with pain that bad how could it be anything other than real?

"It is real." I heard Simon speak up. I could barely raise my head. All I could do was listen as ~Hunt prompted him;

"Go on, Shoebury."

Simon's words resonated with me as he spoke;

"It's not the life you used to have, but it's real. You're lucky, Susannah. You don't remember your old life. You don't remember the people you loved, the ones you left behind. All you know is here… "

Oh that was _so_ true. Susannah was one of the lucky ones, not knowing, not remembering before. If I'd come to this place never knowing that I didn't belong then maybe… maybe I could even have settled here. _Maybe_. "Here, a place where you've earned respect, you've progressed from a DC to a DI in the last ten years. A place where you met someone and fell in love. A place where someone proposed to you, a place where someone made your heart race and made the room spin around you. Can you seriously tell me any of that isn't real?"

My vision started to go black as I heard Susannah whisper

"It used to be."

"Have you ever been hurt on the job?"

"Once or twice… been hit… got shot once..."

"How did it feel when you got shot?"

"It bloody hurt," I heard her say, "how do you think it felt?"

I tried to focus on Simon as he spoke, tried to use it as a way to block out the pain but it was getting harder to breathe and I swear I could hear voices somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind.

"See, this is the same way Gene explained it to me," he continued, "if you felt that pain, then what about all the other people living out there who can feel pain too? What about all the kids who are going to die when Nailer sells a tainted batch of cocaine or some poisonous pills? What about all the people Keats could aim his gun at with no sense of concern or decency?" I could feel his eyes on me as I grimaced and clutched my guts a little harder. "Look at Kim. _Look at her!"_ Oh great, now I was a living, breathing illustration, "You saw who did that to her! And that man is walking the streets right now. If we don't find him then he could come back. He could come after any one of us. He could come after you. And if he brings that gun along with him, the one that I spent half an hour staring down the barrel of today who's to say he's not going to use it on you?" he paused before adding, "and if he does, that will _'bloody hurt'_ too."

_Bloody hurting,_ that was right. I could feel myself edging closer to darkness, I didn't know how much longer I was going to be alive. Could I die here? _Could_ I? I felt like I was about to find out.

"So what do you want us to do, Guv?" I heard Susannah ask but her voice was quiet and distant, and as I heard Gene speaking his voice became distorted and my head began to loll.

"That is a good question, Kite. You and Malcolm, get this Fenchurch West lot to give you unprecedented access to their CCTV. Track Nailer and Keats as far as you can. Anyone gives you any jip about it, tell them the Gene Genie is going to come round and give them a lesson in multi-station co-operation. Bolly, you and me need to do a bit of background research on Jim's employment at Fenchurch West. And Kim -"

Just as I vaguely heard the sound of my name the last ounce of fight I had in me faded and my body grew heavy. With the pain reaching a level I never thought existed I felt myself falling, tumbling to the ground. I couldn't stop myself. I felt embarrassed and ashamed but above all I felt scared, terrified that it just might be all over.

There was a pressure in my stomach that was growing all the time as I lay there helplessly on the ground, hearing the sound of panicked voices as the other gathered around me like I was some new bloody spectator sport,

"Oh god," I heard Malcolm cry

"Kim?" Simon sounded scared and I couldn't blame him. As I lay there I felt something pouring out of me suddenly and a warm, damp sensation pooled around my groin and spread to my legs. Shit, had I _pissed_ myself? It didn't feel like it. It felt like starting my period, except like I'd just started all the periods I'd ever had in one go.

_"First aider here!"_ Susannah's voice seemed distant and tinny as my hearing faded in and out, "don't panic!"

That's when I heard Simon's voice, so strained, as he knelt by my side.

"She's bleeding," he whispered.

I was?

"Where?" asked Susannah, "I'll get the bandages!"

I heard Simon give a strained cough.

"I, uh… don't think they have a bandage for that," he hissed. That when I knew for sure what the sensation I'd felt was. Oh _shit,_ what the fuck was happening? What had he done to me?

"No," Susannah said quietly, "you can't put a tourniquet on that."

I cried softly, whimpering as the pain consumed every part of me. I sensed someone crouching down beside me and suddenly I felt a little safer. Warm. _Comforted_. Alex's gentle voice was a beacon through the darkness.

"Kim? Can you hear me?"

I tried to reply. In fact, I tried to tell her I was fine. I hated showing her how weak I was. But the pain stole my lie from me.

"It's getting worse," I whispered instead.

I heard Alex's voice grow urgent, but her presence beside me was still calming and I felt so thankful that she was there

"Someone call an ambulance," she cried, "I'll go with her."

The thought of her by my side gave me hope that I might just make it yet but Hunt soon killed that hope stone dead.

"Bols, I need you."

"I'll go with her," I heard Simon volunteer. I wasn't sure whether 'I wanted anyone with me or not. Even despite the pain my humiliation was strong. I was still wearing the same clothes in which I'd been tied like an animal and sat in a pool of my own piss. Now I was lying in a pool of blood, unable to move. But I couldn't have protested even if I'd tried. I could no longer manage a word. The pain engulfed me totally and the voices became a blur around me.

As the distant sound of sirens drew closer I had to put my life into someone else's hands. I had to trust in the paramedics I could barely see or hear that surrounded me and tried to stop me from slipping away. Trusting was all that I could do. I didn't know if I was going to make it, in here or out there.

But I was going to give it the damned hardest fucking try that I could.

I wasn't ready to let go.


	24. Chapter 24

_**A/N: This chapter is a little graphic, but please be warned the next will be moreso.**_

**~xXx~**

**Chapter 23**

I had lost control of my life. I could no nothing but lay there as the paramedics strapped me onto the stretcher and wheeled me out to the ambulance. I could hear the voices of Alex and the others fading into the distance behind me and Simon's close by.

"…_doesn't have any family, someone needs to go with her,"_ he was saying.

I merely whimpered and clutched at the site of the pain, terrified that this was it for me. I could feel more blood gushing out of me. I cried with humiliation as well as with fear. I can barely remember getting from the station to the ambulance but the next thing I knew I was staring at the light on the ceiling as a pretty paramedic hovered over me. I could almost swear she was from Casualty. I must have been half-delirious.

"Stay calm, sweetheart, you're going to be alright," she told me.

I _tried_ to stay calm but the pain was worsening and to my utmost shame I found myself screaming; screaming at the top of my voice. It helped, but only for a moment.

"How long has she been like this?" I heard the paramedic talking so Simon as the siren began and the ambulance blasted out of the car park.

"She was kicked hard in the stomach, about half an hour ago," Simon told her. Just the memory of it made me howl again. I didn't know how to cope with the pain. I had never felt anything like it before in my life.

"OK," suddenly the pretty face of the paramedic leaned over me and looked at me with soothing eyes, "Kim? Kimberley?"

There was only one question on my mind, only one thing I could say.

"Am I going to die?" I whispered.

The paramedic looked very serious.

"Not if we've got anything to do with it," she said, "Now, I'm just going to put this mask over your face."

This strange plastic monstrosity loomed towards me and I started to panic.

"What for?" I cried.

"Gas and air, love," she said gently, "it'll help take the edge off the pain. Breathe deeply." I felt reluctant but didn't have a lot of choice s I closed my eyes as the pretty woman placed the mask over my mouth and nose. I tried to breathe in as deeply as I could although the pain made it hard to take in a full lungful. I had taken three… maybe four breaths when I started to feel it; the slight dizziness in my head, the tingling through my body. It felt a little like having a warm haze over my senses, and the very edge of the pain began to fade if only a little. Soon the paramedic came close again to talk to me. "OK, Kim, I need to ask you a few questions. Just try to answer the best you can, OK?" I nodded slowly as she moved the mask away from my face. "Alright, are you pregnant?"

That was a bit out of the blue. I hadn't expected that. What kind of a bloody question was _that?_ I'm a lesbian; I wasn't going to be pregnant, _was_ I?

"No," I whispered, shaking my head

"Are you menstruating right now?" she asked as I heard Simon give a gasp of disgust in the background. I shook my head again. I didn't remember the last time I'd had a period. Had I even had one since I arrived? I just thought that it was something my head had skipped over in what I _thought_ was a dream.

"No," I whispered

"Any history of gynaecological problems?"

I could hear Simon's head practically exploding.

_"For god's sake, man in the ambulance!" _

"No," I whispered.

"Alright," the paramedic told me, "I'm going to take some blood now and we'll be at the hospital in just a couple of minutes."

I allowed the mask to go back over my face as the paramedic began to stick a needle in the back of my hand. I closed my eyes and let the gas and air do its work, numbing the pain, making my mind feel fuzzy, rendering me unable to think or to react as I normally would. As I lay there I realised how familiar the sensation was yet I'd never been given gas and air medically before in my life. I knew where I had experienced it before. It turned my stomach to even think about it but Alex's words came back to me. _Now_ I knew. _Now_ I understood more about Keats and the way he worked. The way he controlled me. Not just me either, by the sound of it. The thought of him trying the same thing with Alex made me want to cry. How many others had he done this to?

I heard something crackle, like static out of the blue. I tried to look around but I couldn't see anything and couldn't really move much anyway.

_"Patient stable, on way, ETA three minutes,"_ the paramedic driving said and I heard the radio crackle to respond but suddenly a much louder bolt of static burst forth. it scared the crap out of me and before I knew what was happening I heard another voice, an unfamiliar one.

"_We've got massive internal bleeding; there must have been more internal damage from the knife's entry site than we saw."_

What?!

_"Get her back to theatre now!"_ a second voice urged.

What the fuck was happening? My eyes frantically scanned the ambulance but no one else seemed to have noticed anything was wrong. There was a beeping noise and then a sound like doors slamming shut before it all faded out again. Was it all in my head? I couldn't be sure

"Did you hear that?" I tried to ask but the mask muffled my words

"Sorry?" Simon asked as he leant forwards.

"The radio."

"They said you'll be there in three minutes."

That wasn't what I meant.

"N-no, after that," I took the mask off as the words I'd heard played through my head again, "they said I had internal bleeding… they said I was going back to theatre."

The mask came back towards my face in the hands of the paramedic.

"Keep your mask on, dear," she told me.

"But they said -" I tried to protest but she just smiled soothingly at me and gently stroked my hair which made me feel a little awkward. It was patronising, but was a gesture of care that I hadn't been used to in this damn place.

"Shhh… the gas and air must be working," she said quietly to me as I felt it numbing both my body and my mind. I tried to relax as much as I could; to let the mask do its job, but as I lay back I realised again how familiar the sensation was.

How he'd done it, I didn't have a clue. But I knew he'd used this more than once.

_Keats._

I tried to hold back my sobs as the ambulance continued its journey. I didn't want to cry. I wasn't even sure what I was crying about, except that the line between being dead or alive had never grown so thin before.

~xXx~

I had never felt so helpless as they wheeled me along through the hospital corridors. All I could see were the bright, glaring lights above me and faces that were peering over me every now and then, like they were checking I was still alive. Maybe they were. Shit, what the _hell_ was happening to me? I could hear the paramedics trying to fill the doctors in on my condition

"Her blood pressure's dropping and she's severely dehydrated," one of them said

"She spent a day and a half tied up with nothing to eat or drink," Simon informed them.

_Great_, now all of _that_ was coming out as well. I could hear the horror in the doctor's voice.

"My god, have you called the police?"

"We _are_ the Police!"

The paramedic spoke up again.

"Patient received a hard blow in the lower abdomen approximately forty minutes ago; a kick from an adult male. Intense pain from contact, easing for a short time and then increasing steadily before the bleeding started."

They wheeled me into a cubicle and closed the curtains around me. I remember I focused on the shitty pattern that graced it, anything to keep my mind and eyes focused on something other than what was happening to me. I thought maybe if I focused strongly enough then I would just have to stay alive because I woouldn;t let my consciousness fade out.

"OK, let's take a look and see what's going on here," a doctor said as Simon angrily drew back the curtain and peered in, shouting

"Hey!"

I was horrified. What the hell was he doing?! I didn't want some random dead DCI looking at all my bits and pieces.

"You can't come in here while we're examining the patient, sir," the doctor told him.

"B-but she's terrified!" cried Simon, "she can't go through this on her own."

"Are you her boyfriend?" the doctor asked and I suddenly started to change my mind about surviving. Suddenly dying seemed like the more attractive option. The humiliation I felt was already halfway to doing away with me.

"No, I'm a colleague - _friend,"_ I heard him say. It was funny but that actually made me turn a little and look. A friend was something I'd never had in that world, not since I awoke in 1995.

"Right, well unless you are next of kin then I'm afraid you'll have to wait outside," someone informed him, giving him a firm shove out of the door. I didn't know how I felt about that. I was still humiliated at the thought of Simon seeing me there but I was so scared and so alone, I wanted someone with me so badly just to tell me I'd be OK.

The nurses began removing my jeans and I wept with shame. They were soaked through with blood which soon covered the table I was laying on as well. I was terrified and mortified, I'd lost any control I had left over my life and I'd never felt so helpless or alone, but as they covered me with a sheet to protect my dignity the curtain opened again and Simon emerged once more.

_"You_ again!" the nurse cried in outrage, "I thought I told you to get out! Next of kin only!"

Simon looked nervous and shifty.

"Yes, that was when I was her friend and colleague," he began, "I'm actually also her brother. I'm her next of kin. Now can I stay?"

Simon was growing on me. The nurse, however, did not feel the same way.

"This is most unusual!" she protested but I found myself screaming,

_"Let him stay!"_

Between my own screams and Simon's expression the nurse must have decided that it wasn't worth the energy to keep evicting him and gave in, warning him,

"Just stay out of the way, we need to work fast."

_"Fine."_

I became aware that the cannula they'd left in my hand had become a focus for the action, with fluids and pain medication being pumped into my veins. The pain was still so bad that the gas and air wasn't really helping any more and whatever they were sticking in my arm wasn't taking effect yet. It was coming in waves; I'd never known anything like it before. I _had_ to be dying, surely. Nothing else would cause so much pain.

"Can I see the notes the paramedics handed over again, please?" one of the doctors asked. I caught sight of the look on his face as he read them over with a frown. I didn't like that look, not at all. He turned his attention to me a moment later and looked over his glasses at me, patronisingly. "Young lady, you were asked if you were pregnant and you said no."

I didn't understand why he said that. Was he just randomly stating a fact? He was staring at me as though waiting for me to answer him. I could barely speak as the pain rose up inside of me again but I just about managed to get out a few words.

"No I'm not pregnant."

I thought that was the end of it, just confirming a fact, but I was wrong. The next three words spoken changed my life forever as he looked right into my eyes.

_"Yes, you are,"_ he said.


	25. Chapter 25

_**A/N: Please be warned this chapter is distressing. Trigger warning for pregnancy loss, miscarriage.**_

**~xXx~**

**Chapter 24**

Well, that just about did it.

How many times had I thought I'd hit my limit in the last few days? I'd lost count. But everything else... being tied and left for dead, finding out the truth of where I was… all of it paled into insignificance compared to the words that I'd just heard.

I stared at the doctor with my mouth gaping open. It was ridiculous. I wasn't pregnant. For one thing, I was gay. For another I was in the _afterlife!_ I was in a bloody coma, I couldn't be pregnant! I looked on in horror as he felt around my stomach. My first thought was the horror of anyone seeing the state I'd let my body get into with all of the drink and the junk food, which I know sounds ridiculous. My second thought resembled someone smashing their head against the keyboard as I let out a strangled cry in pain. He _knew_ I was in fucking agony! What was he poking me _there_ for?

"by the feel of your uterus just starting to rise above your pubic bone I'd put you at about twelve weeks," he said, matter of factly like he wasn't ruining my life with his words, " Maybe more."

"Twelve _weeks_?" I screamed. Half the scream was from the pain in my stomach, the other half from the pain of my emotions. I could hear the doctors and nurses saying things that didn't make sense around me

_"Looks like placental abruption,"_ I heard one say. Well I knew _that_ was ridiculous for a start. How could a placenta abrupt if I didn't _have_ one?!

_"I'm not pregnant!"_ I cried, begging them to take me seriously.

"Are you sexually active?" the doctor looked down his nose at me.

I opened my mouth to scream my sexual preferences at him but something stopped me because I knew in the back of my mind that, despite that fact, there had been a man sharing my bed. Quite why that had happened was something I didn't want to get into or even to contemplate right then as Alex's words about Keats and the gas and air rang in my head again, but I couldn't deny that it had happened and suddenly I felt myself crumbling; my defences were just falling away. I could hear myself sobbing and feel the tears rolling down my cheeks but I felt so shocked and numb that I was almost completely disconnected from them. The full implication of Keats's actions hit me like a new recruit meeting the filing cabinet. He had used me, he'd gotten inside of my head and now he'd left me with another heart beating inside of me.

"Kim?" I heard Simon saying my name anxiously but could barely take in what was going on as a nurse asked him,

"Are you the father?"

"What-? _No!" _he sounded as horrified by the accusation as _I_ was.

"You've already been a colleague, a friend, and an alleged brother," she challenged him sarcastically, "thought maybe you had another ID to add to your repertoire."

_"I am not the father!"_

"Have you had sex with this young lady?"

Oh my _god_, I wanted to _scream_. I couldn't take this; the awful accusations that were flying around. Nobody understood; _nobody._

_"No!"_ Simon cried, "I'm _gay!"_

Something snapped inside of me as my secret spilled over.

_"And so am I,"_ I cried, my whole body wracked with anguished tears like I'd never cried before. I couldn't stop. They just poured out of me. My body shook as my eyes closed tightly and the tears that had been rolling down my face became a flood.

"Huh-_what?"_ I could hear the shock in Simon's voice. I couldn't blame him really, he knew I'd been sleeping with Keats; it was an assumption anyone would have made but, _shit_, had he never had his gaydar installed? As for me, I just couldn't stop crying. Now that I'd started there was no way to stop the tears. I guess all the pain and all the anguish of the last six months or so spilled out in one go.

"Right, we need to get her scanned, see what's going on in there," I heard the doctor saying but his words flew right over my head until I heard him say, "prepare her for possible surgery."

What the fuck was happening _now? Surgery?_ I'd never been more scared. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Simon standing there and staring at me, shaking his head in confusion. I don't think I'd ever felt so ashamed. I couldn't stop crying, the tears came so hard they burned my cheeks. I could hear Simon saying my name, again and again, sounding more worried about me with each and every time. I finally turned to him, knowing I looked a very sorry sight and the words came pouring out, the ones I hadn't dared to voice.

"I don't know why I did it, Sir," I managed to choke out, "I was so lonely and he was so nice to me... And then he did something and I… couldn't break the hold he had over me." My eyes closed. In my mind I could see him before me; the way he stared, the way he got inside of my head, "how did he make me want him? I don't _understand_…" There was so much more I wanted to say but before I knew it a doctor began to push Simon away telling him;

"You really have to go now, Sir, we need to take her for an urgent scan and it's possible that she will need emergency surgery to prevent her from bleeding to death. So whether you're her friend, her colleague, her brother or her weird _straight-gay man-woman life partner_, then you'll have to wait here."

I wanted to yell '_thanks a lot for pointing out the bleeding to death part!'_ - like I wasn't scared enough already - but before I knew it I was being whisked away and rolling down the hospital corridors, my eyes fixed on the ceiling as the tiles scrolled by like posts on a website. The pain was getting worse again and I started to cry out. I couldn't stop myself. Suddenly the mask came back over my face with more nitrous oxide surrounding my nose and mouth.

I suppose the best way to describe what happened next is; _like a blur_. A horrible, agonising, mortifying blur. My body wasn't my own property any longer; it belonged to the various medical staff that were swarming around me. I had no dignity left. I had no sanity left. I had no control over my thoughts, my emotions or my actions. The gas and air and whatever the crap was they'd shoved through my hand were sending my head twisting into fruitloops in the air. I could hardly work out how to move my limbs. But I couldn't stop screaming, that's one thing I just kept on doing.

I could hear them telling me to calm down but how could I? The devil had shoved one _up_ me. I was pregnant, although seemingly not for long. I had never even thought about it. I'd never thought about my ability or otherwise to conceive. Contraception had never exactly been a consideration for me in the least. Sandra wasn't going to start shooing sperm out the tips of her fingers, was she? And anyway, I'd never even _thought_ about having children. I couldn't comprehend the thought that there was a baby already in there, and fir twelve fucking _weeks?_ What the _hell?_ Yes, I knew my clothes had been getting tighter but I'd been shovelling junk and beer down my throat for weeks. That was the reason my clothes didn't fit any more. And throwing up? I'd done my share of that. Bloody hangovers, that's all it was. Shit, this was impossible. It couldn't be happening.

Before I knew it my smock had been pulled up and there was some goop being splurged onto my stomach. Great, _more_ exposure. I knew I'd put on weight and I didn't want myself on display for everyone to see. I felt so self-conscious. That wasn't the thing to be focusing on really, was it? I couldn't help it. I was better off focussing on that than on the real matter, the one that was already killing my heart stone dead.

I closed my eyes as the ultrasound technician pressed her wand against my belly and tried not to think about what was happening. I could hear snatches of what was being said. There were a lot of long, laden pauses and, I am guessing, a lot of nodding. There were words I didn't want to hear... _pregnancy, foetus, products of conception. _No one said baby. I don't know whether for that I was glad or pissed.

The last thing I remember was the ultrasound tech giving my stomach one last hard poke with the wand, as though trying one last time to make the baby move. That was the single most painful memory, emotionally rather than physically, from the whole thing. Why did she do that when she could _see_ there was no heartbeat? I could already tell that much from the things they were trying not to say.

"Alright, Kim?" one of them was talking to me but my eyes were closed so I didn't know who, "we need to take you to surgery right away."

_"No,"_ I whimpered. I don't even know why I was protesting.

"You're suffering from placental abruption," one of them told me, "if we don't get you into surgery right now then this is a life-threatening situation.

"_It hurts,"_ I whispered.

"The products of conception are stuck at the entrance of your uterus which is increasing the pain," the voice told me, "we need to take you for a D and C immediately."

I didn't even know what that _was_. My head had been squarely in the sand about reproductive matters. All I could do was to keep breathing in that tainted air and remember that this was exactly how I felt whenever he took me to bed.

The procedure is something I replay time and again to this day. No time for a general anaesthetic, I was still awake and numbed while they scraped and cleared away what remained of a baby who'd never had a chance. So cold and callous; I knew _they_ must see this every day but _I_ didn't. _I_ fucking _didn't_. Where were _my_ feelings in all of this as they dropped everything into a tray and muttered about sending it to pathology? I tried to beg them not to, I was delirious and although I hadn't known about the pregnancy I didn't want my baby… _my baby_… to end up pulled to pieces in a petri dish.

I don't really remember being moved to recovery, or how long it took before I passed out from the crying and the medication. All I know is that, as I passed into an anguished sleep, I had been through something that changed my life – and me – forever.

_**~xXx~**_

_**I love you Daisy. I'll miss you forever. I've never forgotten and never will.**_


	26. Chapter 26

_**A/N: Please, please forgive mistakes and errors here, I am very heavily medicated right now and found the editing really hard, couldn't focus at all. But at least I wrote – thanks to my evil girlfriend who came up with the worst threat in the known universe to make me write! ARGH! Apparently her years of Alex torture were practice for torturing ME! But I love her for it! **_

**~xXx~**

**Chapter 25**

I don't really remember much of what happened after the procedure or being in recovery. I was in and out of consciousness more frequently than someone getting too close to Malcolm's suit. After a while I heard voices talking to me but I couldn't understand a word they said. I grunted and nodded occasionally in the hope they would think I was at least a little lucid. I just needed to pretend that I was alright so that I could go home as fast as possible. After a while I felt motion below me. I was being wheeled somewhere but it could have been just about anywhere. I could hear voices again, someone asking how I was but I made a conscious decision to block out the answer. I didn't want to hear anyone spelling it out. I didn't want to hear any of those words that meant I had lost the baby I didn't even know I was carrying.

I was awake and yet I couldn't _properly_ wake myself up. I was aware of everything going on around me but every time I tried to tell my eyes to open they wouldn't listen to me. It was probably the medication rotting my brain. Or maybe the exhaustion, I don't know. Maybe it was the blood loss? Or perhaps the simple fact that I didn't even _want_ to know what was going on. I could happily have stayed in blissful ignorance forever but eventually my eyes opened and I tried to gather my bearings.

There was a drip emptying in to my arm, a pile of blood-stained clothes across the room and beside me sat a tall figure. I had to blink a few times to get him into clear enough focus to realise it was Simon.

"Sir?" my throat was raw and my mouth was so damn dry, "What are you still doing here?" it wasn't that I didn't appreciate it… but felt so _humiliated_, so embarrassed. I didn't know how to get rid of him. "You should be finding lard-head, not sitting around with me."

"Someone had to stay with you," he said, "couldn't leave you on your own to deal with this."

OK, now I felt _bad_. I _did_ appreciate the gesture… but I felt wretched. And all of a sudden the full gravity of what I'd done hit me so hard that it crushed me. I felt like I couldn't even breathe.

"I feel so _stupid," _I whispered as I thought about Keats, the hold he had over me and the secret I never even knew I had inside of me.

"You just made a mistake," he told me, "that's all."

That didn't even begin to cover it.

"_Lots_ of mistakes," I whispered, my anger at my actions growing all the time. I could see from Simon's expression that I wasn't getting off the hook easily. He had questions and I couldn't blame him. Fuck, _I_ had questions too. Wasn't sure I was ever going to get answers though. I could see him licking his lips and pulling nervously at his hair, gathering up the courage to ask one of the almighty questions that I didn't want to answer. I braced myself. They were coming, like it or not.

"Kim, how _long_… exactly… were you and Keats together?"

I closed my eyes. I wished that he had worded that differently.

_"Together's_ a bit of a strong word," I said bitterly.

"How long have you known him then?"

I could feel tears threatening. At that moment, my single ambition in life was to hold them back. To _not_ let Simon see them. I just had to focus on that, block everything else out.

"Four months or so," I finally said quietly, "I'd been here a couple of months and I was just scared and lonely. I'd found out stuff about my sister…" I hesitated for a moment. Was I supposed to say _'sister'_? Now that I knew the truth about what happened I wasn't sure if I was supposed to say brother instead. I supposed it didn't really matter right there and then. There would be time to work out the complexities of my new family relationships when I wasn't dressed in a hospital smock with waves of pain rippling through my abdomen, "she went missing when I was younger…" I carried on. As I spoke my mind went off on other tangents about my time in the world and I began to realise just how dark and lonely and sad I had been from the moment I arrived, "and I kept hearing voices like I was in hospital somewhere. Everyone thought I was crazy. They used to make cuckoo noises behind my back in the office." That was one of the _least_ offensive things they'd done. I didn't want to go into any of the others.

There was a strange look of recognition on Simon's face as he sighed.

"It comes with the territory," he said quietly.

I wanted to nod but I couldn't really move. I could see that he knew full well what it was like to be 'the freak'. I took a deep breath and carried on while I still had the strength.

"I got into the swing of ladette culture," I said, wishing that I didn't feel so drained, "and I really did enjoy it at first. Cut my hair, got everything pierced that I wanted to but was afraid to back home. Went out every night of the week, drinking beer and smoking until someone had to drag me back home on a rug." Oh _god_, the regrets were all there. When I thought about what I'd been doing to myself… what I'd been doing to my body… no way could I have supported a pregnancy. There was no way on earth that the baby could have survived. I couldn't let myself think about that now. I would have years to torture myself over my behaviour. Right there and then I had to carry on telling my story. I had to make Simon understand. "One day Hunt pissed me off so much," I carried on, "called me Metal Mickey one time too many, so I stole his scotch and went outside to get ratted. I'd only had a few swigs when this…" as soon as I even _thought_ about it my eyes closed against my will and a strange feeling began to overtake me, as though he still had a hold over me from afar, "this _man_…" my voice broke as I whispered, "with this long coat that just flowed like the ocean… " I swallowed so hard that I'm sure he could hear it, like a comedy 'gulp' in a Tom and Jerry cartoon, "He stood there in front of me. Smoke hung around him like a mist. It was like he wasn't real," I could see every moment of it in my mind as plain as day, like catching a rerun, "He told me I looked like I was out of place. I said, _you're not wrong."_

Simon looked at me as though he too had the weight if the world in his shoulders.

"He has a habit of accosting people at their most vulnerable," he told me and I couldn't help but wonder how and when he'd done the same to the lanky man that was sitting beside me. What had Keats offered Simon, I wondered? He was full of promises. I fiddled about with the top of my hospital sheet just to give my hands something to do. Wasn't like I was going to take up smoking again. Not now I knew. Not now I knew the truth. I was horrified by the things I had done. This world was not some figment of my imagination and if I wanted to get strong enough to go home then I knew I had to change.

"He said he knew about Hunt," I told him, just starting to feel a little guilty for the way I'd treated the Guv. It was true he hadn't been particularly nice to me… nor to anyone for that matter… but I'd seen a different side to him now, "said he'd been picking on people for years and he was willing to do something about it. He said he was going to get rid of everything that was wrong with CID and give us the recognition we deserve." I swallowed and could feel myself getting defensive, "I needed that! I'd already been demoted to DC! I needed something to pick me up." I was edging closer to the parts I didn't even want to _think_ about, let alone explain. "He asked me to meet him for a drink, to discuss the details. He told me if I helped him then I could go home. He was the only one who understood where I was from."

I could see from Simon's face that I had hit a sore point.

"I thought that too," he told me grimly. I gave the tiniest nod.

"So, I met him," I whispered, "He was charming. I turned him down, politely. Explained I had a girlfriend back home. Put his hands up with a smile, said _'fair play'_ and backed away. Perfect gentleman." I shook my head and felt nauseous suddenly, "didn't stay that way for long."

"What did he do?" I could hear the dread in Simon's voice.

"I'm still trying to figure that out," my voice trembled as I tried to distance myself from my words, "the first time, he'd bought me wine. Lots and lots of wine. Kept filling my glass, making sure it was full to the brim. I was completely off my face by the end of the night and he took me home. Sat me down, went to make me a coffee, sober me up."

_"Oh, no, no,"_ I saw a look of panic crossing Simon's face. That didn't exactly help.

"I started to feel funny, "I felt like a robot as I relayed the story. It was the only way to get through it. My voice was slow, my words relayed like I was telling a story about something that happened to somebody else, "It wasn't the alcohol. I've been pissed that many times I've practically got a loyalty card with _Carlsberg_. The room started spinning and I felt kind of floaty. And then," I stopped talking and swallowed, "there he was. And I couldn't get him out of my head." I physically flinched as a million memories slammed into my check and stopped me from breathing. "He stood over me and took off his glasses… those eyes… " I looked at Simon desperate for answers too, "I can't explain it, sir, it was like… like something was swelling in my chest. Like I just couldn't breathe in deeply enough to get enough oxygen into my body. I felt this crushing desire," I hated every last word out of my mouth. They killed me inside, "it was like my body just… _opened up_ for him."

Simon looked almightily uncomfortable – but then he _was_ the one who _asked_..

"What happened?"

Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, I didn't want to tell him. I really didn't. But I knew I had no choice. If Keats was ever going to be stopped then they had to know the truth.

"We went to bed," I whispered, a whisker away from giving in to the nausea, "and in the morning he'd gone. I thought I would feel so regretful… but I didn't, and all through that day, I couldn't get him out of my head. I couldn't escape him. All I could see was those eyes… that smile. I could hear him whispering to me. Every time I remembered the feeling of his breath on my neck it made me shiver all through my body. I ached for him, Sir… like when you are so thirsty and your mouth is so dry that all you can think about is the feeling of cool water sliding over your tongue and how good it will feel when you finally get a long, cold drink? All I could think about was his body, pressing against mine. Quenching my thirst"

Simon looked like he was in a daze, as though he had just about been put under a spell too.

"What happened next?" he asked me quietly. I took a deep breath.

"Every time I saw him I'd tell myself that I wasn't going to give in this time," I said, "and every time, he breezed into my world with his slick coat and his haze of smoke and those eyes..." I breathed in slowly as I prepared for another confession, "He asked me to help him with some things…" I admitted, "little things… a file here, a camera there… I knew it wasn't right but every time I tried to protest the spell came over me and we'd end up in bed, or over his desk…" I hated myself more with every last word I uttered, "or against the wall… in the cells… the back of his car…" I looked at him with red cheeks and the biggest sense of guilt as I concluded; "the back of _Hunt's_ car…"

Simon spluttered and turned kind of blue.

"Gene's car?" he cried, "his precious Fiat? Does he know?"

I rolled my eyes.

"Am I still living and breathing? Of _course_ he doesn't know! If he did I wouldn't be here!"

Simon shook his head slowly,

"Do you have a death wish or something?"

I hung my head a little.

"Jim said it would be the ultimate prize," I said quietly, "he said it would be like kicking him in the balls. I _knew_ it was wrong, but Hunt… just kept on pissing me off, and Jim was so _masterful_," I froze, horrified with myself for saying such thing. Simon was looking highly disturbed.

"So, _sex, cameras_, what else?" he asked.

"I started to feel so, so guilty," I began, "I missed Sandra so much. I tried to tell Jim it was over but he told me if I stopped seeing him I'd never get home. I told him he'd promised me that _weeks_ ago and nothing had changed. Every time I tried to fight the urge I'd go woozy again. Every time he came near me… I felt like when they gave me that stuff in the ambulance."

"Gas and air," Simon said quietly.

I nodded silently. It didn't need any further clarification than that.

"Then _you_ came along," I said quietly, "and I could see you weren't from here ether. I thought _you_ could get me home."

I watched his face falling before me.

"I wish I could," he whispered. I didn't want Simon to start feeling bad so I carried on.

"I phoned him, I told him it was over and I wasn't going to work against Hunt any more. But as you know, he didn't like that."

"Don't feel bad, Kim," Simon began, sounding surprisingly sympathetic considering all that I had done, "we've all been taken in by him. It's hard to see through his promises, especially when you're lost and far from home." He paused. "But there's one thing I don't understand." I watched his cheeks redden a little with embarrassment as he asked, "How can you be three month's _pregnant_ and not _know?"_

Oh, _great fucking question_, Simon. _Thanks_ for that. I felt my heart sinking fast.

"I thought I wouldn't get pregnant because I'm gay," my voice trembled as I made an admission that burned me so badly I could hardly speak, "how dumb does that sound now? I'd never had to think about birth control before."

"But didn't you _know?"_ He sounded incredulous and I couldn't blame him, "weren't there signs? My DI had a baby, she was puking all hours of the day."

I gave a tiny shrug as I realised just how many things I'd blocked out or ignored. How fucking ignorant _was_ I?

"When I wasn't seeing Keats I was going out and drinking beer all night," I explained, thinking about all the sickness in the mornings, "I'd wake up feeling green at the gills, but that was situation normal. It wasn't a good night if I didn't wake up over the toilet bowl."

I saw him cringe. I had a feeling he was going to have to get used to doing that if we were going to be friends. I'd never made a point of sparing someone's blushes and I sure as hell wasn't starting now.

"Definitely a ladette," he said. I wasn't sure whether to agree or be offended. There were more thoughts plaguing me and I couldn't look him in the eye any more. I stared at the wall, ignoring the tears that were starting to gather in my eyes as I remembered that morning when I'd been forced to confront the way my body had changed when my trousers failed to fasten.

"I know I got a bit of a belly," I admitted quietly. My cheeks were flame red with embarrassment, "I thought that was the beer. I didn't think it mattered. This wasn't real… I'd be going home at any time, back in my usual body," I thought about how I looked before I arrived in 1995, "My usual, boring body, with the boring long, dark hair I never liked; no holes, no art…." All at once I remembered the thrill of the needle piercing my flesh; the scissors freeing me of my dark prison of hair... "maybe there _are_ one or two positives about his place after all." I admitted quietly.

I saw the tiniest smile cross Simon's face before his expression contorted with myriad emotions. I wondered what was going on, he seemed at the mercy of a million different feelings as he whispered,

_"You…_ It was _you."_

A shudder passed down my spine.

"_What_ was me?" I whispered, "what have I done now?"

An emotional smile flickered onto his face as he whispered,

"Nothing. I… I saw you before." He gave the smallest pause, "At Malcolm's memorial."

In my drug-addled, exhausted state all I could picture was someone lowering Malcolm's suit into the ground in a coffin. Which to be honest, would be something of a relief.

"I don't understand," I told him. He seemed to struggle to get his emotions under control for a moment before he reached out and took my hand, It wasn't a gesture I'd been expecting and I wasn't sure what to do.

"Kim," he whispered, "what year are you from?"

Oh my god.

_Oh my god._

Those were the most beautiful words I had ever heard. That was all I'd wanted all I'd ever wanted, for someone to acknowledge the situation and to believe that I was a long way from home.

_"Two thousand and three,"_ I breathed, the words numbing my pain better than any number of pills.

I watched him close his eyes

"You were there, in two thousand and ten," he whispered, "at Malcolm's memorial. You sat next to me. You knew me… but I didn't know you."

I was so confused, I didn't understand what he was talking about.

_"What?"_

"You _make_ it, Kim," I watched him wipe roughly at his cheek as a tear escaped, "you get home. And some seven years later, you'll come and sit next to me at Malcolm's memorial service. I'll have gone home from my first time here…" I watched a crushing sadness come over his face as he looked down and whispered, "and that night, _I'll _be the one who's on Keats' menu." he shook his head slowly. "But you make it. I promise you now, you are going to get home."

Those were the last words that I'd been expecting. In fact it was the last piece of news I expected to ever hear. After Simon's death had been revealed to him so cruelly I was expecting to be next. I had stopped thinking about getting he and surviving, it seemed way beyond the possible. But here he was, this strange man, this man who I'd never met before in my life giving ne the hope that I needed and longed for.

Somewhere deep within me, I released a cry. I couldn't even tell that it was _me_ at first. It seemed to consume me, to take me over. I just cried out, let me voice rise as high as it needed, I cried and I closed my eyes and I let the most enormous sense of relief wash over me. As I tried to accept the truth the almighty knowledge that I would make it, I heard a beep. I thought it was coming from my room at first but it wasn't. I heard it from within my head. I heard it from another place and time.

_"That's it… the bleeding's stopped. Good work, everyone."_

I looked around but no one had spoken.

_"Let's get her sewn up and take her through."_

Something had happened on the other side. _Something amazing. _

Back in my year, my home, my world, my body was healing. Whatever had stopped it from doing so before had been fixed. They'd been fighting for me out there – so now I knew more certainly than ever that I had to keep on fighting in here.

My life was worth surviving for.

I was going to make it home.


End file.
